


tell me we're dead and i'll love you even more

by quarterdeck



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Fix-It, M/M, Magical Realism, No Major Character Death but like.. a large presence of death in general lol, Post-IT Chapter One (2017), Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Slow Burn, Talking To Dead People
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:14:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 77,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25714129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quarterdeck/pseuds/quarterdeck
Summary: Richie Tozier is a chatterbox. The infamous Trashmouth, most relentless of babblers. Always has been.Loud enough to wake the dead,is what his parents and friends always say, but Richie doesn't know how to tell them that the dead were never sleeping.If they were, he'd have a hell of a lot more peace, that's for sure.--or: Richie's Voices have more of a basis in reality than anybody thinks. He'd say it's a secret he'll take to the grave, but even that wouldn't be the end of it for him.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 139
Kudos: 335





	1. 1976-82

**Author's Note:**

> an alternate universe in which for my own purposes the sixth sense (1999) was not released in 1999 ❤️

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Tell me we're dead and I'll love you even more. I'm surprised that I say it with feeling. There's a thing in my stomach about this. A simple thing. The last rung._
> 
> Richard Siken, The Torn-Up Road

It happens for the first time when a heavily pregnant Maggie Tozier passes by the Derry Cemetery, though she never makes the connection between the two in her mind.

Little Richie is going to be their first baby. Her and Wentworth have been running themselves ragged reading everything they can get their hands on about what to do, how to prepare, the proper steps and procedures. She’s twenty-four weeks along, so they’re supposed to start feeling movement any day now, and the anticipation has been killing them. 

One of their books had mentioned that babies are meant to kick more in your stomach when you talk to them. Like - plants, how they grow taller the more you interact with them. And hey, they had figured, where’s the harm in trying? So they’ve spent - god, just _hours_ speaking to him in there, probably making idiots of themselves in their one-sided conversations, but at least having fun doing it. When that hadn't yielded any results, they'd turned the TV on, played the radio loud - Wentworth warbling along to Bad Moon Rising until Maggie had chucked an orange at his head, told him to pick a different song, that one sounds too much like a bad omen.

 _Come on champ,_ Went had begged just half an hour ago, kneeling down to address her stomach before she’d laughed him off, slipping her sneakers on to go out for a quick turn around the neighbourhood. _Give us a kick, just a little one. I can’t stand the look on my Maggie-girl’s face when you leave us hanging._

They'd waited, breaths held - but no dice.

But that’s fine. They have time, the two of them, and patience, and what’s more it’s been fun in it’s own way to keep upping the terms of their ongoing bet as to when it’ll finally happen. 

It's quiet around Derry today. The air is crisp and the sky bright, but the stillness and hush of the early morning hour must mean that the birds are all still asleep and she hasn't even seen any cars around. It's a relief, the quiet, for Maggie and the chronic headache she's had for weeks already. 

That’s what makes it so surprising when she turns onto the sidewalk bordering the local cemetery, and the inside of her stomach feels suddenly like a lineup of Rockettes have taken residence.  
  


**\----**

The cognitive and behavioural developments that characterize the ages of three to five are typically an unremarkable series of happenstances in a child’s life. These achievements, if they can be called that, might be celebrated by their parents in the way that childhood milestones usually are, in dated baby books, and polaroid photos, and clunky old camcorders. But in the end, every child climbs through the stages one by one, and comes out of them on the other side a more aware, competent, and independent little human than they had begun. 

This stage of childhood development hits Richie Tozier like a slap to the face. 

Richie had always been a chatty baby. Hearing this never comes as any surprise to the people who know him later in life, verbose little trashmouth that he is, and it had been similarly easy for Went and Maggie to dismiss his infant babbling as _just one of those personalities_. But it’s harder to explain his apparent inclination to speak to thin air when he’s three, four, five, six, and his linguistic development has grown more mature. When he’s able to explain himself, and the answers aren’t what people want to hear.

But even this is quickly brushed off - all kids have imaginary friends, after all. No big deal - the kid will grow out of it soon enough, so why not let him have his fun?

One paediatrician hadn’t wanted to brush off the constant chattering, the restlessness and constant activity. He had handed Richie’s Mommy a dull pamphlet, mentioned the words _Hyperkinetic Impulse Disorder_ , words too big for Richie to understand, but he already knows he doesn’t like them by the way the appointment has his Mommy's lips thinning whitely when the man looks balefully over at him and suggests that Richie start to take some _ri-tah-lin_.

“Is that a medicine?” Richie asks her when the appointment is over, hand held tight in her own as they cross the street to get back to the parking lot where their car waits. “Am I sick? Eddie’s mommy _always_ gives him medicine, and she says I should take some too because I’m dirty and prolly I'm going to infect him someday.”

They’ve gotten to the other side now, and Maggie freezes for a moment before she shakes her head, and bends down to swing Richie into the air and onto her hip amidst his shrieking giggles. 

“There’s not a single thing wrong with you, my baby,” she says, and Richie smiles happily, tucking his face into her neck. Now he can tell Eddie that, and Eddie can tell his mom, and then he’ll never get glared at again when he reaches out to touch his friend and Sonia looks like she’s going to hiss at him like that mean old cat he can hear outside his window sometimes. “Adults aren’t always right, you know. And Eddie’s mom is right less often than most.”

Richie climbs into the car so Maggie can buckle him up safe into his carseat. He feels bubbly and light with happiness. He should have just asked his mommy _earlier_ if he was sick so he didn’t have to keep worrying all the time about what would happen if he accidentally hurt Eddie.

“Thanks for telling me ’m not sick, mama,” Richie says, tracing his finger down the window beside him so he can make little patterns in the condensation, little loops and spikes. “Because sometimes me an’ Eddie are playing and his mom sees me and gets angry and she sounds like Mr. Gibson's mean old cat next door. Like - _hssssssssss_.” 

He tries to show her the approximate sound, but the central gap where he lost a front tooth makes it difficult, and he’s not sure the message comes across the way he intends it to. 

“What?” Maggie laughs, checking her rearview windows as they pull out of the parking lot and onto the road again. “Mr. Gibson's cat died before you were born, silly. But I see what you mean. I’ll try to have a talk with her honey.”

Richie screws his face up, but he’s already beginning to crash from his high energy day, and his eyes are starting to droop. Oh well. He can let his mommy know later that she’s wrong, that sometimes the cat next door is so loud it keeps him up _all night_.

But all of this will be years down the road. Before he even knows Eddie, before he grows old enough to express himself in any meaningful way and thus start raising questions about his strange mannerisms, all anybody can say for sure is that Richie Tozier happens to be a particularly loud baby.

And at that time, every night Wentworth sticks his head in to check on him in his nursery. He does the usual parental check: present, safe, breathing, sleeping. Check, check, check… sometimes check, but more often than not still awake and making it known.

And every night without fail, as soon the door _snicks_ quietly shut behind him, Wentworth comes out laughing. He shakes his head, absolutely bemused by that son of his, as he makes his way over to Maggie where she sits waiting for him on their living room couch.

“You’d think there’s a whole damn jamboree going on there, way he’s babbling on.” He says to his wife, collapsing onto the couch next to her. Maggie reaches over to tuck a strand of curly hair behind his ear and laughs quietly, tucking herself into his side. “Never seen a baby so chatty in my life, I swear.”

Maggie just laughs, dropping her head backwards to meet his eyes, and grins at the feigned outrage she finds there.

“Just you wait until he starts learning real words,” she says warningly, always fondly. “We’re never going to have a second’s peace.”

But that’s for later too, and it’s quiet between them now, in these moments after Richie’s been put down for the night. Went pulls Maggie’s legs over his lap, tugging down the crochet throw from over the back of the couch to cover them. That’s when she draws her face up from where it rests in the dip between Wentworth’s shoulder and face, palms pressing into the sides of his face, and brings their lips together. Went smiles against her mouth, bringing an arm up to tug over her shoulders and bring her closer, closer, closer. 

Or, at least that is until the sounds of Richie’s renewed babbling become clear even through the thick hardwood of the door.

“ _Christ_ ,” Wentworth groans, pulling back from a laughing Maggie and throwing his head back to rest on the hard part of the couch, screwing his eyes up so he can’t see the ceiling above him. “Loud enough to wake the dead, that kid is.”

\----

Richie is six years old when he stops just talking back to the people he hears, and begins trying to actively imitate them instead. 

He’s got an ear for the different cadences, always has, and his imitations garner him laughs often enough when he tests them out that he’s moved to put a concentrated effort into improving them. This, more than anything, is a source of extreme confusion for his parents - there isn't exactly an abundance of different dialects to be found around Derry, and Richie has already managed to catalogue hundreds. 

Over time they become his Voices, and in that way they start to become less scary. When he can make them his own and pretend that they’re just around to help him become funnier so he can grow up to be like - like Flip Wilson, or Bob Newhart, or something.

Just for practice. Educational. No different from watching Reading Rainbow, if Reading Rainbow was narrated by ghosts. 

Because that’s another thing that Richie accidentally figures out at six. 

It happens just outside the drug store one day. Richie’s mom has gone inside to pick up - he doesn't know, some boring stuff, and she’d told him to wait outside while she went in, it’d only take a minute. So Richie plunks himself down on the curb, kicking his feet out with his face balanced on the palms of his hands, fingers tap-tap-tapping restlessly over his cheekbones. His mom is taking _forever_ , and she promised him ice-cream after but he knows the hands on the clock, and he knows the ice-cream shop will close if they don’t get there soon. 

He nearly topples over onto the rough gravel when he hears the screams. 

Luckily Richie catches himself right before he hits the ground with the heels of his palm. Unluckily, they’re scraped to all hell and the sharp stinging sensation has tears springing to his eyes before he can help it. But even then it only takes him a second before he’s scrambling back up to whip his head around and try to figure out where the sound is coming from, hands cradled protectively to his chest. 

It's giving him a headache. After it's screams, it's just loud voices, and then it's dead silence. Then the screams start again, and the cycle continues. And all of it sounds like it's coming from the alleyway behind Keene’s. He can't see anyone there, but it _is_ dark and it's obvious that people _must be_ , otherwise - well otherwise nothing. They're there, he can hear them.

He takes a small step forward, but just as immediately steps back again. He doesn’t want to just _stand_ here if people are in trouble, but the emotion behind the sounds have his body shaking with adrenaline and fear, and he thinks he should maybe just wait until an adult arrives to fix it. 

He’s frozen there, stuck in his indecision when elderly lady walks right by the mouth of the alley, humming thoughtlessly to herself. Richie stares at her, waiting for her to notice the shouting and do something about it, but she doesn’t even pause once in her route. She turns the corner and disappears behind the library, and not once does she indicate that she's noticed anything out of the ordinary. 

Three more people pass obliviously by the alleyway before Richie feels like there’s no choice but to go look for himself. 

He creeps closer and closer to the dark entrance, looking behind him to make sure his mom hasn’t come out to find him yet. He can still see her through the front window display and she’s not yet at the counter to check out, so he’s still got some time if he wants to be back where he was told to stay before she comes looking for him.

The voices are getting louder the further in he gets, but they sound like they’re coming from all around him at once, and Richie doesn’t know where to look. 

_Help us God help us, please, we are innocent The Devil has come to take us, has come into our homes, has eaten our children, our prayers are going unanswered, what are we to do what are we to do in this terrible time, this apocalyptic hour have we left home for this?_

_May God have mercy on our souls._

_May God have mercy on our souls._

_May God have mercy on our souls._

Richie slams hands down over his ears, humming loudly to tune it all out. His head feels like it's going to explode. And he doesn't even _see_ anybody. But further down in the alley, past a pile of broken crates and smashed beer bottles, a dull shine of brass shines faintly on the wall behind generations worth of dirt and grime. Richie’s eye is caught by it.

He runs forward, hands still pressed tight over his ears. When he reaches up to swipe it off, there are letters underneath and Richie screws his face up to sound them out, still trying to filter out the loudness around him.

His daddy had practiced his letters with him for weeks and weeks, watching him write out shaky sentences and handing him books to read out loud before Richie realized with excitement that he was now able to do it all by himself. He reads out everything he sees now, carelessly shouting out the words as he encounters them, which makes his parents laugh but more often gets him in trouble when his teachers catch him at it and tell him he needs to work on being less "disruptive". 

These words look different from any of the ones he usually tries, but it's the only thing he's seen in here and he thinks he should at least try. 

**COMMISSIONED IN MEMORY OF THE THREE HUNDRED AND MORE ORIGINAL INHABITANTS OF THE SETTLEMENT OF DERRY, MAINE, WHO DISAPPEARED FOREVER WITHOUT A TRACE IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1715. MAY GOD HOLD THEM CLOSE AS HE SPIRITS THEM TO THEIR HEAVENLY REST.**

The words send a chill down Richie’s spine, even if he doesn’t fully understand what they mean together. But... three hundred is a _big_ number, and he’s not stupid, he knows what ‘disappeared’ means. 

“Disappeared.” Richie repeats to himself, hugging his scraped arms tighter to his chest, even as it worsens the stinging of the wounds. He’s never thought of it before, that _people_ could disappear. Or - at least not forever. Socks disappear from his room all the time, and the flowers disappear when it snows, and sometimes his mommy will laugh at his daddy, say _Where did you disappear to?_ when he’s out in the garage for too long, but he never disappears _forever_. Just like when Eddie’s mom grabs his arm and tells him it’s time to go home now, and Richie feels like Eddie disappears for days and days until they can play together again. But he always comes back, and every time it's like he never left. 

But this sign says that all of these people disappeared _forever_. They didn’t come back home to their sons, or their wives, or their best friends after a little bit of time away. 

Could that happen to him? Could he disappear forever one day?

Would his parents remember him? Would Eddie, and Stan, and Bill? Would he be important enough for a brass plaque on a wall?

He hates it. It’s scary, the thought of going missing. All of a sudden, it makes him want to cry.

 _Yes, disappeared_ , _they say,_ a voice says mournfully, quieter and more close to his ear than any of them have been yet. _But all this time we have been here, dragged under the ground by the Devil himself_.

Richie whips around and runs. He runs and runs and runs and runs and runs and runs until he’s barreling into his mommy’s legs, and she stumbles back, startled, before catching him around his shoulders and asking him what’s wrong. 

But how could he tell her? He understands it all now, and it’s like in _Scooby-Doo_. They’ll only believe you about the ghosts if there’s a mask to rip off. 

\----

So Richie gets used to it. 

It’s not like he has a choice - the voices have been around him just as long as he can remember, and it doesn't seem like they’re going anywhere. He lets his mommy and daddy think they’re his imaginary friends, and he practices his Voices, and he tries to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach when he thinks about how what he hears are the voices of the dead. He doesn’t think he can call them _ghosts_ \- because, well, he never sees anything. It’s only ever the _voices_.

And only ever audible in the place where they’re buried. These are the rules. 

Those scared, religious people in the alley. Mr. Gibson's screeching cat. The disembodied, enveloping voices of the cemetery. If he turns them into jokes, they can’t be scary. 

As Wentworth is tucking Richie in that night, he decides to test out a new one on him.

“Night Rich,” Went whispers, leaning down to press a kiss to his forehead and pull up the blankets to his chin. “Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed-bugs bite.”

“Hey, don’t sell me a dog,” Richie whispers back, “Yer off your kadoova if you think that’ll scare me into sleeping.”

His father lets out a startled laugh, fixing Richie with a confused stare, eyebrows raised. He opens his mouth to speak, but closes it, shaking his head and laughing again. He presses one last kiss to Richie’s head before he turns around to leave. 

“Where the hell does he get it from?” Richie hears Wentworth ask his mother fondly as the door closes behind him. “He doesn’t even watch that much TV, and he’s out here sounding like a whole damn United Nations conference.”

  
  



	2. 1986

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The blond boy in the red trunks is holding your head underwater because he is trying to kill you, and you deserve it, you do, and you know this, and you are ready to die in this swimming pool because you wanted to touch his hands and his lips and this means your life is over anyway._
> 
> Richard Siken, A Primer for the Small Weird Loves

There’s a man under Richie’s floorboards. His name is Abram. The day that Richie learns this is already a pretty shitty one, and the discovery doesn’t really do much to help.

It’s just been one thing after another. 

First he’d missed his alarm and hadn’t been able to get a ride to school, Went and Maggie already pulling out of the driveway by the time he’d thrown on his nearest patterned button-up and shoved a piece of toast in his mouth. This wouldn’t normally be a problem, except that by the time he slips his shoes on and leaves the house, the only shortcut left that will get him to school on time means passing the cemetery in order to get there. 

It’s - not ideal, but he’s already been late to homeroom three times this week and for once he actually has a _reason_ to try avoiding detention.

So he takes it, and even though he’s running as fast as he can, it’s never quite quick enough to muffle the sounds coming from past the gates. 

_It's fine_ , he tries to tell himself. _It’s just the wind._

It’s not a convincing argument even to his own ears. By the time he throws himself into the seat at his desk only a second before the bell rings for the start of class, avoiding Eddie’s glare from where he sits beside him, he feels as sick and shaken up as that path always makes him.

The thing is that Richie is fine with the Voices when they’re just one on one by now, has even grown familiar with the most verbose of the people who haunt the town. But he’s never been able to shake his unease passing the cemetery gates. That excess of disembodied voices all overlapping one another. He feels swallowed by them. Always the cemetery - and one other place. 

The lingering fear from that day in the alley had never left him, the voices of all those hundreds of settlers pounding into his brain. He's never gone back in since that day, not even now that he understands. It's bad enough that every time he passes by the mouth of the alley - only when absolutely unavoidable - he's inundated by hundreds of accusatory voices slinking up to his ears. 

_Tell them_ , they demand of him, _tell them where we are. Let us have a proper burial_. _Y_ _ou are the only one who can._

Richie doesn't like to let people down. He - _neurotically_ does not like to let people down. He _pathologically_ does not like to disappoint people. And he's done his best to help the people he can hear before! He really has. There's an elderly lady down by Memorial Park who tells him about the long years that she and her friend Dorothy lived together in the town, and he'll sometimes go down and bring along a book to read out loud to her because it seems to make her happy. He doesn't know how the old caretaker at school died, but he doesn't mind so much when he has to sit in the storage closet to hide out from Bowers and Hockstetter and the two of them shoot the shit for awhile, bored as he must be shut up in the walls there. 

But what was he supposed to do in this case? Go up to the City Hall, tell them he'd solved the mystery of the lost settlers? Tell them _Yes sir, and I know it because they told me so themselves_. Fucking sure. Not like _that_ would get him sectioned in an instant. It's not realistic, and on a more selfish note he so badly does not want to give the people of Derry yet another reason to look at him askance. To whisper about him behind their hands and turn their noses up as he passes by. 

Richie had spent a long time feeling sick with guilt over that. Years and years, until he got a bit older and learned more about what exactly the nature of settlers were, and decided there were bigger fish to fry in this world than to respect their final wishes. 

And that’s only the second bad part of the day.

Because oh, lucky fucking Richie, like some sort of cosmic joke they’re covering the _skeletal system_ today. 

He has hope, briefly. Mr. Abbott says that the anatomical model he brought in to demonstrate for them is just a fake, that it’s all just glue and hollow plastic. 

Richie knows that’s a lie when it starts singing sailor tunes loud enough to drown out today’s lecture. 

_Fuck._ He’s going to have to ask Stan for his notes, and then Stan’s going to want to know why he wasn’t just paying attention himself, and then Richie will have to come up with something that wasn’t _Sorry chap, too distracted listening to the obscene croonings of our late great friend, that skeleton up there. Oh, and Mr. Abbott’s a fucking liar._

And that’s exactly what happens.

“Richie, come _on_ ,” Stan says, exhausted as soon as the request leaves Richie’s mouth, pausing in his action of unwrapping his sandwich. “How come you didn’t just write your own? You weren’t even talking through class today. For once.”

“Vell, Stanislav,” Richie begins, thinking about testing the waters with one of his newer Voices before giving it up as too unpolished. This one would have been Viktor, the fellow whose ashes are scattered across the landscape that makes up almost all of the Barrens. Richie loves that guy. When the four of them played Hide and Seek there the other day, Viktor let him know where his friends had hidden each time he was It and he had been unbeatable with the advantage. The guy’s a real pal, but Richie will have to workshop the Voice a bit more before feeling confident monologuing with it.

“I was sitting there, right, and I was thinking ‘Wouldn’t it be something if that chap up there had once been a sailor of the seven seas?’ And then, well you know how it is, your mind runs away with you and I couldn’t quite hear Mr. Abbott over the _‘Away, away, with fife and drum, here we come full of rum, looking for women who_ -’” He finishes the rest of the vulgar ditty with relish, delighting in studied disinterest of Stan and the horrified face of Bill across from him. Best of all is Eddie, who chokes out the sliced apple he's trying to eat.

“Richie, that song's _disgusting_!” Eddie shrieks, but he’s laughing as well. “Did you make that up yourself, oh my _god_ -”

The sound of Eddie’s laughter lights up like fireworks in his chest. It's probably because he's his best friend, the reason why the proof that Richie had done something to make him laugh always felt sweeter than it ever did with anybody else. 

“Sadly I did not, Eddie my love,” Richie responds with a feigned sadness, throwing an arm over his friend’s shoulder beside him and ignoring his laughing squirms to get out. “I’m afraid that honour goes to the good men of the Royal Canadian Navy from where the charming song originates.”

At this Eddie looks skeptical, letting out a snort. Stan and Bill are entirely forgotten beside them. “I don’t believe you. How would you even know a _Canadian_ sea shanty? You’ve never even been on a boat in your life. But you _do_ have a mouth like one, so chances are -”

“We live in Maine!” Richie shouts back, throwing his hands up, noting how Stan ducks to avoid the flying orange slices. “Go ask a sailor, dude!”

“Where the fuck am I going to find a _Canadian sailor_ in fucking _Derry_ , you moron-”

So that part of the day isn’t too bad, actually.

No, the worst thing of all happens right after school. 

The four of them - him, Eddie, Bill, and Stan - had gotten out of last period together, but Stanley has a dentist appointment that afternoon and needs to rush home, so Richie had thrown an arm around Eddie while Bill said goodbye, asked him if he wanted to come over to his house and hang out for a bit.

He has a surprise waiting for Eddie. Well - _t_ _echnically_ it was a couple of surprises, and technically they were all already in his backpack (and thank god he had thought to throw it all in there the night before), but by the time the bell had rung for lunch something about the environment had felt too open and vulnerable for Richie to present it to Eddie so publicly, in front of everyone like that. He's not sure why - he's allowed to give a gift to his friend if he wants to, after all. Nothing wrong with that. But Hockstetter and Bowers had been sitting nearby and something about the former's gaze on him had him swallowing back the words he had been bursting to say all day, and so he'd focused on harassing them with more of Herman's sea shanties instead. 

As a result of this uncharacteristic self-control, he had been vibrating out of his skin waiting for the final bell to ring so he could get them both to his house already and give it to him. He’d almost gotten kicked out of English from the sound of his foot-tapping alone. If it hadn’t been for Stan’s threatening glares and steady hand pressing down on his knee from under the desk, it would have been weekend detention for sure.

But now he’s free, and he can _finally_ show Eddie what he's been so close-mouthed about all month. 

Fact - it’s well-known to all that Sonia Kaspbrak has put the kibosh on her son having personal access to... really anything fun at all. Eddie has never been allowed to buy anything good of his own: no games, or music, or comics, or movies.

Which is why Richie had devised a plan to fix all that. Stage One is music, and it had taken him weeks, but he’d finally saved up enough allowance to start a small collection of cassettes for Eddie. Kate Bush, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Cyndi Lauper. All of Eddie’s favourites and more. He’d even thrown in some of his own when he realized how expensive his plans were getting. And - a mix tape of songs that made him think of Eddie shoved discreetly behind the rest.

And that wasn’t all - the _real_ surprise, and the real reason he had been so excited all day, was the fact that Eddie needed something to play it on. And so he decided to give Eddie his own Walkman, this time to keep rather than just borrow for a day or two even if he didn't normally like his music. Richie could always beg another from his parents - Went's a dentist! he can afford it! - but Eddie would never get the chance otherwise. 

That's the plan. Except - 

“Sorry, Richie,” Eddie says shaking his head, those big brown eyes comprising ninety-nine percent of his entire body mass, small thing that he was as he stares up at him apologetically. “Bill got Centipede the other day and he already asked me if I wanted to come over and play. But tomorrow maybe?”

Oh.

Richie nods with his best attempt at a smile plastered over his face. Bill was the only one of the four of them that had his own Atari, so it was no wonder that Eddie would jump at the chance to spend the day there, what with the aforementioned campaign of his mother to ban any joy at all from Eddie’s life. What did Richie have to compete? A shitty little Game Boy that only ever frustrated Eddie because of the bendable reading light he had to attach to the top of it to make up for the dark screen, and his Walkman that none of his friends ever even _wanted_ to try out because of the “terrible music” he always chose to put in there. It’s part of the reason why he was so excited to give it to Eddie, now that it would be complete with selections that he knew he'd like better. 

He _could_ just ask to tag along with the two of them - Bill would happily have all of them over, no doubt - but that wasn’t the point of asking Eddie over anyway. On any other day he probably would have just followed Stan back home like a stray dog to demand comfort and lick his wounds in peace, but that obviously wasn’t an option either now. Looks like it’s another lonely day for Richie Tozier. At least he can take the long way home this time.

“Oh. Yeah, that’s okay Eds,” Richie says, “But uh - wait a sec, I’ve got something for you. I was gonna give it to you later, but… anyways, just hold on one minute and then you guys can go.”

Richie turns around, throwing his knapsack to the ground and digging around for the Walkman and the little bag of cassettes that he had carefully wrapped in there earlier. He had found a little gift bag in the basement to use, probably left over from one of his birthday parties, patterned with a bunch of diagrams showing the inner workings of different kinds of cars (perfect for Eddie, what a find!), and he had only briefly considered writing a little note to go with it. He’s fucking glad he didn’t _now_. As if this could get any more embarrassing for him. 

Stan and Bill have stopped speaking by now, and Richie is kind of hoping that Stan will leave before he turns around with the present so there’s at least one less witness to his shame.

But that’s apparently too much to ask for of this shitty, shitty day. He’s waiting there just as curiously as the other two, ready to bear witness to the shitshow that is Richie Tozier's attempt at emotional vulnerability.

Richie takes a deep breath, but he’s already put the wheels in motion, so he has to turn around eventually. Standing up, he brushes the dirt off the hand that had been resting on the ground, and holds out the bag to a confused looking Eddie, staring somewhere over his shoulder rather than directly at him. He should probably say something right about now, but in light of the reworking of the plan he's had to do, he's got nothing.

“But it’s… not my birthday?” Eddie says slowly, reaching out to grab the bag, but not yet opening it. Richie latches onto this throwaway comment with all the desperation of a drowning man locating a serendipitous life raft. 

“Oh, do you fucking say?” he says sarcastically. “Our birthdays are _two days apart_ , Eds, I sure hope I wouldn’t forget what day it is. But if that ever does happen, I give you full permission to hold it over my head until the day I die because I'd really be seven kinds of stupid then.” 

“Okay listen you fucking asshole,” Eddie begins, but falls silent when he pries open the top of the bag (stapled together, Richie had improvised) and stares down at the contents within. Stan and Bill aren’t even trying to be subtle in how they lean over his shoulder to get a good look at the contents, and Richie starts to think yearningly about how he would rather go find Bowers and offer him a big old bear hug than look at either one of them right now.

“Richie-” Eddie breathes, mouth gaping open as he wordlessly tries to comprehend the embarrassment of riches that has just been offered to him. "This is..."

“Yeah,” Richie grins shakily, already starting to ramble, “I figured since, you know, your mother and I disagree over our parenting methods for you and all, that you could use a way to listen to some tunes of your own instead of having to borrow ours all the time. And you know, no use having one of those without some tapes to listen to. So.”

“You... love your Walkman,” Eddie says blankly, still staring down at the contents of the bag, seemingly unable to process it all. “You begged your parents for one for _ages_. You listen to it all the time. And these tapes must have been... _so_ fucking expensive, holy shit.” 

“ _Well_ , Went can always get me a new one, can't he?” Richie says with a shrug. “He owes me for… something. Who cares. Anyways. Sorry. I was gonna give it to you at my house later, but, uh - good thing I remembered to put it in my backpack earlier, huh?”

Eddie looks between the rambling Richie, and Bill who’s waiting patiently behind him, seemingly torn as to where he should be going. _Ugh_. That’s not what he had meant to happen at all. He doesn’t want Eddie to feel bad about going over to Bill’s, he just wanted to be able to give him the present and leave with his dignity intact, and _now_ look what he's done. 

“Oh no, Rich, I’m sorry. I didn’t reali-” Eddie starts, and he looks properly upset now, shoulders slumped and head hung.

“It’s all good!” Richie interrupts him, throwing a smile. “Peace and love! Happiness in all! But, uh - I should get home now. I have a - thing. That I promised to do. At home. So.”

He’s rambling again, not his usual kind, and he _knows_ this, but he can’t stop himself and he doesn’t even understand why he’s acting the way he is. All he knows is that his face is burning in a way that reveals feelings he can’t even sort out for himself, and he needs to get out of here. 

And he needs to do that without having to see the pity on his friends’ faces.

So he flashes them one last smile before he throws himself onto his bike and pedals away as fast as if the Devil himself was after him. 

  
  


\----

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. 

How much more fucking embarrassing could he have _gotten._ They're probably all having a good laugh about him now, hilarious Richie who thought this would be a good present. Bill has an Atari! He’s got Centipede and Donkey Kong and Pac-Man and fucking _Q*bert!_ And he thought, what, that he could make Eddie’s day with a stupid _Kate Bush cassette_? What a fucking idiot!

And it’s so stupid that he feels embarrassed, like he wants to crawl into a hole and never be seen again. 

The worst part is that he doesn’t even understand _why_ it’s so different. 

Here's the thing. Once, when they were seven, he’d given Stan a plastic container full of worms he’d collected from the sidewalk the day after a big rainstorm. He’d gotten the idea because Stan had been talking excitedly the day before about some new type of bird he’d seen that hadn’t stayed still long enough for him to mark down in his notebook, and he didn't know how he was going to get it to perch for him the next time he saw it. So Richie had come up with the genius idea of collecting worms to entice it with, but then he’d gotten so excited collecting them that he hadn’t paid attention to how many there were in the bucket until it was nearly overflowing. 

But that was even better, Richie had figured. If a big old bucket of worms wasn’t enough to get a bird’s attention, what was?

And, okay, so he hadn’t thought it through much past that. Stan had said thank you, of course, and he tried to smile gratefully at the offering, but Richie knew him well enough to tell that he wasn’t best pleased with the nature of the offering. No biggie. Bill probably would have liked the worms if he had a use for them, and even Eddie if he could get out of his own head long enough to appreciate them, but living, squirming gifts were not for Stanley. Note taken.

He’d simply taken the hint and kept the worms himself. And Stan was delighted with the giant Birds of North America book that he brought over instead and that had been that. 

But _this_ gift. He doesn’t understand why its failure is making him feel so small, and stupid, and _embarrassed_. And blushing red in the face, worst of all.

“ _Ugh_ ,” Richie screams into his pillow, muffling the sounds so that neither of his parents will hear it and be moved to come in to check on him. That’s the last thing he needs, to be forced to explain his failure to even more people. “Fucking _fuck,_ god _damnit,_ Jesus _Roosevelt_ Christ am I ever a _moron for the ages._ ”

 _Right little croaker, ain’t ye?_ A hoarse voice from under his bed asks, and Richie startles, pillow dropping from his hands as he freezes still in his spot. He doesn't usually startle at unexpected voices any more, but he's also never heard one coming from _under his fucking bed_ before.

“What the _fuck_ ?” he whisper-screams, scrambling onto his knees and sticking his face upside-down to look under his bed for the _fucking cowboy that’s apprently hiding out there_. “Who the fuck are you?”

 _Folks round here used to call me Abram_ , the voice says, _Pleased to make your acquaintance, kid._

“You - have you been under here this whole time?” Richie asks, bewildered, struck promptly right out of his own self-pity. “What the fuck? Were you buried under my _floorboards_? Why haven’t I ever heard you before?”

 _Well I used to talk to yous when ye was just a little creepmouse, but pardon me kindly if ye haven’t been too interesting to talk to again till now_ , Abram says a bit waspishly, snorting dismissively at the very thought. 

Richie casts his mind back to his parents' age-old complaints about his infant babbling all through the nights. He’d taken their word for it that it was just his natural tendency to chatter on because despite vague memories of late-night conversation he’d never really had cause to think otherwise. Until now. Jesus Christ. 

“Jesus,” Richie says, collapsing back onto his bed, spread-eagled and blowing away the curls covering his eyes up so they’re out of the way. His heart rate is slowing again. “Alright then. Hit me with it. What’s the story.”

 _Well if yer so feckin’ interested,_ Abram says sarcastically, but settles in to tell his tale quick enough. _Y’ever heard of the Bradley Gang?_

Richie frowns, casts his mind back to see if the name rings familiar. There’s... something there, but he’s not sure if he’s thinking of them, or the old Western his dad had running on the television the other day. 

“Like... the bank robbers?” Richie asks slowly, not sure what kind of answer he’s hoping for here. “Came down from Connecticut and died in a shootout with the police when they got to Maine?”

_Yessirree, that’s me! Came riding through town, me and my companions, figured we’d shoot up the local bank and be outta town ‘fore sunset. Or, iffin' the town looked quiet enough, take up residence here. But no such luck, no sir. Let our guard down for just a second, but it was enough, wasn’t it? Bang bang bang! Had me no living relatives which means no one to claim the body and into an unmarked grave I go. Guess your homestead was built up over that._

Richie gapes wordlessly up at his ceiling. For once in his life, he’s rendered entirely speechless by what he hears. 

_Had the blue devils after that, believe you me._ Abram chortles, taking no notice of Richie’s shocked state. _Feckin’ swine. Ah well, I had meself a good run._

“ _Fuck_ ,” Richie groans, brain rebooted and hands coming up to cover his eyes in resignation. “I’m sharing my bedroom with a bank robber. Fucking excellent.”

 _Better than sharing it with a banker though, ain’t it?_ Abram asks, and cackles to himself as Richie pouts on the bed above him. 

Despite their new reacquaintance, Richie never gets the chance to ply him with any further questions, because that’s when he hears a _screech_ come from the direction of his bedroom window, and Eddie’s legs appear through the space made by the opening. Richie nearly falls straight off of his bed in shock. Christ, his heart can't take much more of this day.

“Who are you talking to, you freak?” Eddie asks, hopping down so that he stands right in the middle of Richie’s room and brushes his hands down his shirt and shorts carefully so that the dirt and grime courtesy of the tree wipes off of him. 

“Wh - _Eddie_ ?” Richie says, overwhelmed by the combination of the sudden re-introduction to the cowboy outlaw under his bed and the sudden appearance of his best friend who has _never climbed in through his window before_ in such close proximity to each other. Fuck, does he ever feel discombobulated. “You - wait, why did you come in through the window? Went and Maggie are downstairs. You could’ve just knocked.”

Eddie blushes right to the roots of his hair. Richie watches the progression of the pink, fascinated. He shuffles his feet, not making eye contact. " _You_ always come in through my window. I just thought… I don’t know. It’s stupid I guess.”

“That’s because your mother hates me and would never let me into your house willingly. But it’s - it's not stupid at all, Eds,” Richie hastens to reassure him. “Why, it’s mighty brave in fact! My tree’s about fifty years older and twelve times more frail than yours. That’s a lot harder to climb. I’d be shakin’ in my daisy roots!”

Aw Jesus, he’s already adopted Abram’s twang.

But it does its job. Eddie looks bolstered by his stupid voices and grins at this, feet still shuffling together while his cheeks turn even more pink. Richie almost forgets to ask him what he’s doing here, he’s so intrigued by the way the sun glows just behind Eddie, casting him in gold light and making him look like one of those angels in Rabbi Uris’ paintings. But still -

“I thought you were supposed to be at Bill’s?” Richie asks quietly, eyes dropping down to where his hands lie in his lap. Eddie walks over to knock at Richie’s shoulders, and unzips his fannypack to shake his new-old Walkman at Richie, the first cassette already loaded in. 

“I was, but so what?” Eddie says dismissively. “All Bill has is a stupid Atari. This is much cooler. Now come on, I want to listen to all of these before I have to get home.”

Eddie toes off his shoes and pushes Richie’s shoulders over until he’s lying flat on the bed staring up at the ceiling in shocked (but pleased) surprise. Once he’s satisfied that he won’t be tracking any dirt on Richie’s stupid Looney-Tunes sheets, he climbs up to lie beside him, tongue poking out as he starts the first tape. It's the mixed one Richie had made special.

Richie thinks this is the happiest he’s ever felt in his life, but that’s when Eddie slips a sweaty hand into his own hesitantly, and Richie’s head is so high up in the clouds that by the time he comes back down to earth, he’s missed the next two songs completely.

 _Ohhh. It’s like that is it?_ Abram asks delightedly. Richie slams a foot down hard over the side of the bed and onto the floor, smiling innocently when Eddie whips a startled head over to stare at him.

He doesn’t even know what that’s supposed to _mean_.


	3. 1989 (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _All night I stretched my arms across him, rivers of blood, the dark woods, singing with all my skin and bone: Please keep him safe. Let him lay his head on my chest, and we will be like sailors, swimming in the sound of it, dashed to pieces._
> 
> Richard Siken, Saying Your Names

A difficult line exists when you have the sole ability to hear the dead that Richie has never quite been able to find. 

To hold all of that knowledge, all those secrets of the people who have passed, is a burden that Richie sometimes wishes he didn’t have to carry. Because once you know something, the problem then becomes what to do with all of that information. Does he use it to help the families who are left behind? The friends? Or is it only more cruel in the end, being the cause of those reopened wounds, that permanent hurt, without being able to explain how and why?

And how to know the difference?

Just once, Richie thinks he’s found it. Not only does he feel in his heart that Bill deserves to know the same things that he does, but he figures that telling him is a safer bet than most, as one of his best friends. As one of the four - and eventually seven - pieces of his heart.

That time would end up being his first and last, because in the end the desire to help had gotten him nothing but the hot taste of rust in his mouth and the sharp ache of betrayal in his chest.

So the fallout from that attempt had been bad enough that he never tries again. But years down the road, every time he passes a sewer grate from that day forward until the day he finally leaves town, he tips an imaginary hat, thinks _I’m sorry I couldn’t stop it from happening, Georgie Denbrough, but I once took a real slug to the nose for you._

_\----_

It hadn’t taken Georgie going missing for Richie to know, instinctively, that something was wrong with this summer, though it sure does complicate things when he does. 

Some sort of cosmic balance has been upset. That much is clear - even the Voices have been different lately, at times subdued and at others frantic and agitated. Abram is quieter these days than he's been in three years, and no amount of questioning from Richie will persuade him to explain why.

The first Voice that had really pinged on his radar had been Viktor. Stan ropes the three of them into coming birdwatching with him one of the first weeks of summer - though ‘roped’ isn't quite accurate; Bill likes the chance to sketch out the birds in motion as they spot them, and Richie and Eddie like wandering off to catch frogs or to swordfight with fallen branches whenever Stan’s glares get a little too pointed. But this time they hadn’t even taken more than two steps into the trees before Viktor’s voice had been in Richie’s head, absolutely unrelenting in every direction. 

_Go home, malen'kiy krolik, and stay there. You take your friends and you run._

There’s no chance - no real privacy - for Richie to ask him what he means, why all of a sudden he shouldn’t be in this place where the four of them have played happily for years. But Viktor’s voice only grows more urgent the longer they stay there, never giving any explanation for a gravity that he’s never shown to Richie before. Finally the begged warnings have his stomach twisting too much and he blurts out that they all need to leave, right now.

“Richie, we’ve only been here for _ten minutes_ ,” Stan says exasperated, not bothering to look up from his binoculars. “Go toss a stick around with Eddie if you’re so bored already.”

" _Please_ , Stan,” Richie says, looking around compulsively to see if anything is hiding in the trees, frustrated at Viktor’s sudden and arbitrary recalcitrance. He doesn’t know what’s supposed to be so dangerous out here, but he doesn’t want his friends to be out wandering blindly if something _is_. And it’s his responsibility to get them out of here if there is, because he’s the only one who can hear the warnings telling them to get out. Richie Tozier, guardian of the masses. What a joke. 

Sometimes he thinks it would have been better if Bill had gotten this ability instead of him. Bill, who was like a knight in a fairytale, brave and good and always sure. _Bill_ would be able to keep them all safe, Richie knows that if he knows anything.

Stan is quiet for a minute, probably thrown by Richie's lack of response to that comment with something like _What am I Stanley, Eddie's bitch?_ But ultimately he just sighs, thinking this is simply another one of Richie’s attempts to wind him up, and goes back to searching for his birds through the lenses of his expensive binoculars.

Eddie is looking at him with concern, though, and even Bill is looking over frowningly at him now too.

“St-Stan,” Bill murmurs, tugging at his sleeve and gesturing over at Richie. Richie feels a sudden rush of fondness run through his body for Big Bill. It’s not that Stan wouldn’t listen to Richie alone - whenever he pulls himself away from his bird watchers long enough to notice that he’s _actually serious_ about this, that is - but there was something about Bill that made it impossible not to follow his lead. To have him back Richie up when he’s trying so hard to get them out of there for what must seem like no good reason is a priceless gift in itself. 

“But why, Richie?” Stan asks, not unkindly - just confused. And really, he’s not wrong to be. Richie can’t remember the last time they all went home after a day spent out together without the rest of them having to drag Richie away to do it. The only person less willing to go home at the end of the day was always Eddie, and the rest of them knew what awaited him at home. They understood why he preferred to have his friends around him for as long as possible, and so their attempts with him were always a little more gentle. “You haven’t said why we should all leave, just that we need to.”

“Well - just trust me then, how about that?” Richie shouts, tugging at his hair and looking pleadingly at Stan. “I just have a bad feeling Stan. I want us all to leave now, _please_.”

Stan lowers his binoculars at this, searching Richie’s face. He allows it, giving Stan his time and waiting patiently because he’s already sure how this parley will end. There’s never been a single time, not ever, that Richie has really, truly asked Stan to trust him and been refused. 

And it’s no different now, thank fuck. Stan gives them all a casual shrug of his shoulders, tucking his binoculars lovingly back into their case and swinging it carefully over his shoulder, but the concern never leaves his eyes as he acquiesces. “Alright then. Let’s go home.”

"Thank you," Richie murmurs, and Stan gives him a crooked smile as they make their way out.

“I’m not sure how many birds we would have s-seen today anyways, Stan,” Bill says hesitantly, trying to console him but looking around at them unsure, as if even he wasn’t confident in what he was saying. “Haven’t you n-noticed? The forest is completely still. I haven’t heard one b-bird since we got here.”

\----

Three hours later, a new missing poster is plastered all along the buildings of Kansas Street. Betty Ripsom went into the woods that morning for a run and she hasn’t been seen since.

Bill, Eddie, and Stan don’t ask, but Richie can feel their eyes on him anyway.

\----

Next is Georgie, of course. And not only does that mark the end of their summer, it feels in some terrible way like it marks the end of their childhood as well. 

\----

Their days and nights are now spent like this: 

When the sun comes up first thing in the morning, the four of them spring from their respective houses to grab their bikes and meet in front of Bill’s to start their search. It feels like they canvas every last inch of town six times over every single day, from corner to corner, but they never stop. When night falls they stop at one of their houses for food - usually Richie’s; Eddie’s isn’t an option for obvious reasons, and Rabbi Uris is nice enough but would definitely make Stan stay inside if he saw them; Bill’s is a last resort because even though Sharon and Zach Denbrough wouldn’t notice if they cleared out their entire kitchen, such blatant neglect makes it not worth either the trip or the pain in Bill's eyes, in the end.

But Maggie and Went always just laugh good-naturedly as they come in, remarking fondly on _hungry boys_ and _summer vacation, huh?_ to themselves. Richie feels a strange urge to ask them to stay inside at night when he leaves, that he’ll make sure they’re safe, but that's stupid. They’re adults after all, and if there’s one thing that seems clear, it’s that it’s just the kids who need to watch their backs in Derry.

So they eat, usually having to tag-team to force Bill to consume something, _anything_ at least, leaving their bikes on Richie’s lawn and linking their arms to begin their nighttime routine. That’s when their backpacks are most heavy, full of backup batteries and piles of flashlights. Bill had collected all the ones he could from his basement and garage, and Richie too, but even that’s less than they predict needing, so Richie manages to pocket some from Keene’s and get out smoothly without being caught. 

Richie’s never been so constantly exhausted in his life. Nowadays he doesn’t even hear more than two words from Abram before he’s passing out on his bed completely, some nights not even possessing the energy to change out of his jeans. And it’s not just the long hours and hungry work that’s doing it. 

They wander the streets at night, and the forest too, calling out for Georgie. Eddie, Stan, and Bill have their eyes wide open, almost scared to blink lest they miss some sort of clue that could lead them to Georgie, lest they miss the boy himself. But not Richie. It’s not what he could see that’s important - it’s what he might hear.

It’s a good thing they keep their arms linked, because when Richie walks along with them, his eyes are squeezed tightly shut. While the other three direct their flashlights into every dark corner and pitch-black alleyway, Richie wanders like a blind man, ears open and trying to separate the by now familiar voices of the buried and hidden from one specific five year-old's that he hasn’t heard in weeks. He can’t have his eyes open while he does it - it would be too much sensory input. So he concentrates as best he can, spinning his flashlight in what he hopes looks like a good enough attempt at a search, and tries to pray that he’ll be able to make it out amidst all the babble around him. Tries to pray he won’t have to. 

He hates that the burden is on him. He’s only ever talked to the _already_ dead. He’s never had to contend with the leadup to death before, or the fallout from it. 

The other three get picked up somewhere along the way like that, three little magnets flying to the metal horseshoe that are the original four. Meeting Mike, Ben, and Beverly turns out to be the only worthwhile thing to come out of the summer of 1989. The seven of them fit together so seamlessly that it almost feels like the work of fate.

Mike they’d met when their search took them out past the further limits of town, into the farmland area. He’d wanted to know what they were doing out there on his land, skulking around in the middle of the night - understandably suspicious, no fucking wonder with Bowers as his neighbour - and it had only taken one impassioned explanation from Bill for him to join them, eyes just as starry and devotional as the rest of them have felt for years.

Ben had been a more startling matter. The four of them - now five, with Mike in tow, - were searching the Barrens, sometime in the late afternoon, just on the cusp of evening, when Eddie had been in front of them leading the charge one minute and completely vanished the next. Richie - embarrassingly - almost lets out a shriek at this, a sick guilt already curdling in his stomach when he thinks about Viktor’s warnings and how he hasn’t kept Eddie from entering the woods again even after Betty Ripsom’s disappearance. Thank god it doesn’t get to that point though, because when they all rush forward to see what happened, Eddie’s startled face had popped right back up, caught cradled in the arms of a vaguely-familiar boy around their own age who had been digging out a pit somewhere far enough away from town that he hadn’t thought anyone would stumble across him. That’s Ben, who not only thinks their cause is a noble one, but just seems happy to have some new friends to run around with.

Beverly, on the other hand, had taken a bit more convincing once when they’d first met her. When they found her smoking in an alleyway late at night, right around the beginning of one of their nocturnal rounds, she’d been silent and reserved, unable to figure out if all of these boys were just here trying to fuck with her or being genuine. They would probably have respected it and left it at that, but right as they turn to leave, Ben sticks his head out from where he had been standing at the back of the pack and waves shyly at her. Something in her face had softened then, her shoulders relaxing a fraction of an inch, and she was suddenly more interested in listening to the rest of their story. 

So now it’s all seven of them spending their days together and going out every night to search. That’s just the fucked up way of things. You make your lifelong friends by searching your hometown for someone’s missing kid brother because in a town like Derry, the only sentinels are the children, and God, are they ever watchful.

And one by one, they all begin to whisper to each other about the things they've started to see, the spectres that have started to haunt them. Richie doesn't say anything during these meetings, just sits and listens to their ghost stories because what's he supposed to say? Nothing has changed for him, not since the day he was born. 

It all comes to a head on a Wednesday night.

It’s sort of stupid, in retrospect. They’d been so focused on searching every nook and cranny of the land within Derry limits that they’d never stopped to think perhaps they should’ve been looking a little closer to home all the while.

 _Richie_ , he hears one terrible night from the storm sewer as they start to make their way up Bill’s street. _Wait, Richie, don’t go! I need to talk to you!_

He almost pukes right then and there, even as he tries to tell himself that it must be someone else’s voice. It would be a laughably pathetic excuse, the idea that it’s some other dead five year-old out at midnight, if the reality of it wasn’t so horrifying. But there’s no mistaking Georgie’s voice. He’s heard it enough, after all, every last iteration of it after all of those long hours spent at Bill’s house over the years. 

Shrieking laughter, _Do another voice, Richie, do another one!_

Gasping baby sobs, a bleeding knee stuck out as he runs into the room, _Eddie, I need a bandaid, fix it for me!_

Concentrating tongue stuck out of the side of his mouth as Stan flips through his giant bird book, pointing out different types and getting Georgie to guess their names, a frustrated little kick of his leg while his arms are crossed _Well_ , I _think they all look exactly the same._

Even his little snores, curled up asleep on Bill’s lap as his brother stabs rapid-fire at the controller buttons, fingers moving fast but arms statue-still so he never jostles his baby brother from his sleep. 

Richie presses his right heel onto the dragging lace of his left shoe, covertly unravelling it while the others continue their search none the wiser. When they keep walking past the sewer grate, Richie pretends to stumble, tearing his arm out of Eddie and Stan’s. The rest of them turn back to look at him questioningly, and Richie bends down under the guise of figuring out the lace situation.

“Sorry guys, go on,” Richie waves them off, sure to keep his voice as even as possible. It’s a fucking horrible task, with Georgie’s voice still ringing in his ears and Bill’s hopeful face right there in front of him. “I’ll catch up in just a sec, I just need to tie my shoes.”

The rest of them nod and carry on, hands entwined like paper dolls, but Eddie and Stan waver, unsure whether to leave him alone anywhere even for a second in times like these. Richie gives them both a reassuring grin, mentally begging them to just leave already so he can get this over with.

“Aw come on, don’t break ranks for little old me,” he says, “Seriously guys. I’ll only be a second. I just don’t want to trip you up if I wind up falling on my fat head.”

The two of them move on, obviously reluctantly, but Richie doesn’t really have the capacity to care for that right now. He hums frustratedly, acting like the laces are knotted in a particularly difficult way to buy himself some time, and when his friends are far enough away that he doesn’t think they’ll be able to hear him, he scrambles onto his knees.

“Georgie?” Richie whispers, voice cracking. This is the worst thing he’s ever had to do, worse than the cemetery and worse than the settlers, and worse than every time Bowers finds him scared and leaves him bloody. “What - Georgie, what happened to you?”

It’s a terrible thing to ask of a five year-old, even Richie knows that at his own young age. But what else is there to do? He needs to know what happened so he can figure out what to do for him, for Bill, for all of them and every other poor sucker in Derry who is in danger of getting snatched up any second.

 _I can’t tell you Richie,_ Georgie says, and Richie didn’t think ghosts could cry, but there’s no other word for what’s happening right now, _‘m not allowed. I’m sorry._

Richie sniffles himself, rubbing his nose with the heel of his hand and staring defeatedly at the dark opening where Georgie’s voice is coming from. He doesn't know what to say to that, but it doesn't matter because Georgie isn't done.

 _Richie_ , Georgie says, and his little voice is determined now, _Don’t let Billy go into the sewers. Okay? Promise. Tell him, um… tell him I’m okay, but it’s scary and dangerous so just please don’t go down there._

“Okay pal,” Richie says agreeably, knowing in his heart that there’s no possible way to promise any of that - trying to keep Bill from searching _anywhere_ for his brother without an ironclad reason behind the request is just asking for a punch in the face, and what the fuck is he supposed to say about that other part? _Oh, Georgie? Yeah, he’s fine, he’s only dead_. But he can’t tell Georgie that, and he’s already trying to keep his tone cheerful for the kid's sake, even as he knows that it’s only a matter of time before he won’t be able to anymore. “Sure thing. I’ll do that for you.”

 _And… um,_ Georgie says, and for the first time since Richie’s been talking to him he finally sounds truly, properly sad, _Can you tell Billy I’m really sorry about his boat? I lost it, but I didn’t mean to. I tried to get it back but the clown wouldn’t give it to me._

Richie doesn’t know what he means by that last part, but at least he can do something about the first. 

“Bill was never mad at you, buddy,” he tells Georgie, injecting as much vehemence in his voice as is safe to do without being overheard by the others, “He knows you wouldn’t lose your boat on purpose. He loves you more than anything in the whole world, you know.”

 _Yeah?_ Georgie says, so hopeful.

“Yeah,” Richie says, voice even. “Promise. He told me so himself.”

Georgie doesn't answer, but that’s when his friends call for him, and Richie has no choice but to get up and rejoin them. 

Richie doesn’t hear Georgie call for him from the sewers again after that night, but sometimes when they're on that street and Bill is calling for Georgie, Richie could swear he hears a sniffle. But it’s okay. As long as he keeps his promise to Georgie to keep Bill out of danger, he can handle it. Richie Tozier can handle it all.

\----

So Richie breaks that promise, Eddie breaks his arm, and when Bill hammers angrily into his face, it almost feels like something breaks in his heart.

But at least he knows what Georgie had meant by the clown now.

\----

  
  


And of course, it all goes to shit from there. Eddie is torn away from them by his mother, and the other six of them split up to go their own ways in anger and in pain. All of the scary things are still happening, but this time it's happening to them all on their own, with no one there to hold them up when they crumble.

 _Best strap your running boots on, my boy,_ Abram tells him that night, voice foreboding as Richie lies in his bed, clenching his eyes shut tight as if hoping strong enough will let him go to sleep amidst the throbbing that extends all the way from his nose to his temples. _I reckon we’re in for a meaner one 'n usual this time. You and your little friends better watch your backs, or next thing you know ye’ll be wearing a pine overcoat._

Richie has met a lot of ghosts over the years. Has held conversation with hundreds of dead voices, some he likes and some he decides quickly he never wants to speak to again.

But of all the voices in Derry, there was one that Richie had steadfastly refused to acknowledge. A limit he had set for himself, and hadn’t dared to cross, at least not until the summer of 1989 when every last rule of the world that had previously been set in stone turns on its head.

When Richie and Eddie were still quite small - young enough that Sonia hadn’t yet banned Richie from her house in all but name - the two of them had a rare sleepover at Eddie’s house. Richie suspects that she had only relented because Eddie had refused to let it go, had asked and asked and asked, and at least having the two of them at her own house was better than sending her precious darling to the house of those ‘no-good hippy types’ again.

And despite everything, it had been fun. Sonia left the two of them alone upstairs for the most part, and even if the food was the most bland thing Richie had ever tasted, he was always just happy to be around his best friend. 

No, it was what happened that night that had changed everything. 

Sonia came in at eight o’clock to tell them that it was time to wash up and go to bed. She’d even given Richie a pointed glare as she rolled out an ancient-looking sleeping bag onto the floor beside Eddie’s bed, telling him that Eddie-Bear could get sick if the two of them were to share. Richie wanted to tell her that they always share if they get tired at _his_ house and Eddie’s never gotten sick, not once, but he’d held his tongue. No doubt she’d take any chance to pack him off back home, even if it was the middle of the night.

So that’s where they had been, Eddie perched at the edge of his bed to whisper to Richie and Richie curled up like a guard-dog against the side of his bed. Their conversation had only petered out a few minutes when Eddie started seriously yawning. It must have been the time he usually fell asleep at, internal clock consistent as ever.

In retrospect, that explained perfectly why the stillness of the night was broken when it was.

The voice is soft and gentle, worming its way quickly into his head and causing him to sing along instinctively, once he’s heard the pattern of the words enough that he was able to mimic it without too much effort.

“ _Kotki dwa, szarobure obydwa,_ ” Richie mumbles, eyes drooping heavier each second by the soothing rhythm of the song. “ _nic nie_ _będą robiły, tylko ciebie bawiły._ ”

He’s fast growing tired, which is probably why he doesn’t recognize the singing voice until it’s too late to realize that he should probably have kept his mouth shut. He almost makes it through the rest of the song before he realizes that Eddie is staring at him from the top of the bed, wide eyes luminous and sugar-glider huge in the dark of the room.

“‘s matter, Eddie Spaghetti?” Richie yawns, rolling over so that he was curled up to face Eddie rather than the window. “Thought you were sleeping already.”

“That’s - how do you know that song?” Eddie asks him in a stunned whisper, fingers gripping the bedspread tight where it falls over the side of the bed. 

“Oh - uh,” Richie scrambles, so tired that his brain feels like mush and he can’t come up with a good enough excuse. “I don’t know. I guess I must’ve heard it somewhere before.”

Eddie continues staring at him, now toying with the blanket between his fingers. 

“My dad used to sing me that at night,” he finally says quietly. “It was my favourite lullaby.”

“Oh - Eddie I’m sorry. I didn’t know, or I wouldn’t have -”

“No - no, it's okay,” Eddie interrupts him “It’s…. nice actually. To hear it again. My mom doesn’t like when I talk about it or anything, so. You know.” 

He gives a little shrug before gifting Richie with one of his small, genuine smiles and turning back over to go to sleep. Richie waits a beat before he picks the tune back up, quietly murmuring the words over to him until Eddie's breaths are slow and even.

And that had been that, but if Richie occasionally hummed the tune when Eddie had trouble falling asleep after a scary movie at Bill’s or when something particularly upsetting had happened to him that day, that was kept between the two of them. 

So Richie sneaks out of his window that night, ignoring his bike where it lies kicked over sideways on his front lawn. It’d be easier to cycle over to Eddie’s house, even if nothing within Derry limits can rightfully be considered ‘far’, but he’s not freezing his ass off out here in the not-quite-yet warmth of the July night to go over there for a social visit. Or at least not the kind that Eddie needs to be awake for.

He has to stop himself from laughing hysterically as he takes the dark backstreets that wind over to the Kaspbrak residence, blowing breath into his hands and rubbing them together to conserve warmth. It’s a crying fucking shame that he can’t actually tell Eddie or anybody else about any of this, because this whole situation had the potential to be comedy _gold_. _Oh sorry, Eds,_ he’d say as the boy stuck his angry little face out the second story window and demanded what he was doing there, crouching in his backyard like a fucking creep, _I’m here for your dad, actually, not you._

He’s not sure what would cause more fuss. The fact that his signature ‘Eddie’s Mom’ jokes had now evolved to encompass his father, or what it potentially implied about himself that they had. 

The light is off in Eddie’s window by the time he gets there, but he’s careful anyway as he climbs over the picket fence and drops himself carefully onto the wet grass underneath. He stills, listening for any disturbance, but all is quiet for now, so he makes his way over to the large elm that stands smack dab in the centre of the Kaspbraks’ backyard. Richie lowers himself down onto the wet grass, legs crossed facing the trunk of the old tree. It’s a line he swore to himself he would never cross, but desperate times call for broken oaths, and Richie needs to figure out how he’s meant to keep Eddie safe when everything around them has been confusticated and turned upside down. Nothing makes sense anymore, but Richie Tozier’s need to shield Eddie Kaspbrak from harm stands as strong and firm as it ever has.

“Mr. Kaspbrak?” Richie murmurs, palms pressed to the wet earth as if that will make it more likely to yield a response to him. “Mr. K, if you’re there I need your help. It’s about Eddie.”

 _Richie? Little Richie Tozier is that you?_ a kind and soft-sounding voice responds, sounding as if it’s coming right out of the rough bark of the elm. _Well I’ll be. I was wondering if you’d ever come speak to me, what with how often you’re climbing up that tree in the night._

The cadence is familiar in the way that a half-remembered dream is - the last time Richie had seen Frank Kaspbrak was when he was five, and that was right before he went into the hospital for the final time. The nighttime lullabies are the only other reference he has to place the voice of Eddie’s father. 

“Um - yeah,” Richie clears his throat and presses his palms more firmly into the ground where they’ve started to shake. “Please, I’m sorry to bother you, but something’s been happening this summer, and I don’t get it, and I need to know what to do so I can protect Eddie.”

 _Eddie? Is he hurt? Did something happen to him?_ Frank asks, and his previously soft voice is now tipped with fear and dread.

“Yes, that’s why I’m here,” Richie says, frustrated, and beats his palms uselessly against the ground. “We went into Neibolt to find Bill’s brother Georgie even though I already _know_ that he’s fucking dead, but the clown was there and Eddie fell through the floor and snapped his arm. And now Sonia’s got him locked up like Rapunzel, and nobody will explain to me what’s happening and _I don’t know how to stop any of it from happening again_.”

 _Okay_ , Frank says and it’s clear that he’s trying to soothe him, but it’s also clear that Richie's rambling incoherences about the clown didn’t surprise him, and that’s possibly more frustrating. It seems like every Voice in Derry knows what's happening, but none of them will tell him a single thing. _Okay Richie. I’m glad you’re looking out for him. Thank you for that._

“Thank you f- you don't have to _thank me_ ,” Richie says, and he barely even knows what he’s saying, he feels so frantic and impatient with the need to get some answers for once. “Of course I'm looking out for him, I love him, so you just need to tell me how I’m supposed to actually protect him!”

The pause after Richie says this has his stomach clenching in fear. He hadn’t meant to confess it, and - well, it’s not like there’s anything Frank can _do_ about it from six feet under even if the thought did upset him, but he’s never said it out loud before and he wants very suddenly to run. It’s only the knowledge that this moment right here is his best chance at protecting his friends that he has and if he leaves who knows what could happen to them later on that keeps him rooted bravely to the ground.

 _There’s not a great deal that I can tell you,_ Frank warns him, sorrowful and frustrated himself, and Richie is thankful that he passes over his accidental confession without comment. _The rules for us down here are different than they are for you. But this is important - the monster that calls itself Pennywise feeds off of fear and belief. It is these two things you need to remember. The more you all stand together against what makes you scared and weak, the stronger you all become. And Eddie needs to kn-_

But that’s when a light comes on in Eddie’s room, and the window cracks open to spill the faint bit of lamplight onto the lawn beneath. Eddie’s little head pops out just as Richie had idly imagined earlier, but his tone when he speaks isn’t the demanding one he had thought he’d hear. Mostly he sounds confused, and worried. Maybe it was uncharitable to think he’d be more angry than concerned at finding Richie crouched in his yard alone in the middle of the night after everything that’s happened to them lately.

“ _Richie?”_ Eddie whispers from the top window. “What are you doing here? Wait - don’t answer that, just come up here.”

The ground beneath him is silent now even if Eddie wouldn’t be able to hear him anyway, and as things stand Richie has no choice but to nod up at him and brush off his jeans to grab on to the branches of the elm and begin to follow his usual path up. Eddie withdraws his head to leave room for Richie to climb in when he gets to the top, but it’s when he’s halfway up the tree that he hears Frank speak to him one last time.

 _Richie,_ Frank says, quiet but firm, his voice getting quieter the further off the ground he gets, _I’m glad Eddie has you to love him. And whatever comes, he is lucky that you do. Remember that._

The implications of that particular statement are too much for Richie to bear, so he doesn’t acknowledge it. By the time he’s launching himself through the window, the night is back to being as quiet as it ever gets for him, and Eddie is waiting anxiously at the windowpane to tug him the rest of the way in. Richie doesn’t need the help - has never needed the help, at least not since he’d passed the point of doing this multiple times a week since the age of seven. But he doesn’t mention any of that. If Eddie needs to reach out and touch him to make sure he’s really there and safe, he can give him that.

Unfortunately though, he hadn’t actually planned for actually _seeing_ Eddie tonight and completely forgot about the state of his face. 

“Wh - Richie, what the fuck happened to you?” Eddie whispers, looking over his shoulder to make sure his door is shut and locked away from the prying eyes and ears of his mother. Richie’s surprised that there weren't already steel bars built over his window, personally, but that’s neither here nor there. “Did Bowers get to you after I left?” 

Richie huffs out a laugh at that. It's almost funny to think about Bowers being the biggest concern for _any_ of them right now. 

“Copped a mouse from our very own Big Bill Denbrough, Eddie my love,” he says in an approximation of some posh Victorian gentleman, shaking his head. _This_ voice has no basis in reality, which is probably why it’s his weakest one. “Came over all faint when it happened, I did, but sometimes friendship’s a funny game, you know.”

“ _Bill_ did this?” Eddie shrieks, and Richie flaps a hand to shush him in case Sonia actually wakes up through the haze of her usual sleeping pills for once. She hasn’t caught them yet, but now would be a hell of a time to start. “ _Our_ Bill? What the _fuck,_ what an asshole! Why?”

Richie hums, not to agree or disagree with the pronouncement, but just an acknowledgment that he’d spoken. He doesn’t really want to get into why the fight had happened - actually, even though he hadn’t planned on it at all, he kind of just wants to sit in Eddie’s company now that he’s already here. And Richie doesn't blame Bill anyway. His brother is dead, an evil fucking supernatural clown is after all of them, and Richie is lying to him every single second about what he knows about all of it. Shit, he'd punch himself in the face if he didn't already hurt so bad. 

Eddie sighs at his silence, ostensibly in resignation, but Richie can see the concern lurking behind his eyes. He feels a little guilty, all of a sudden - he hadn’t meant for Eddie to see him at all tonight, and the last thing Eddie needs right now is to worry over him, because it always hit him particularly hard whenever Richie and Bill argue. It didn’t happen often enough to be a problem - probably would never even have happened at all, but like he said - different rules this summer. But still, Bill was his oldest friend and Richie his best, and in the rare times that the two of them went head to head, it was always Eddie that felt hurt the most in the end. The price was never really worth it for either of them.

“I should go,” Richie says instead, pointing a thumb toward the still-open window. “I didn’t mean to wake you up or anything. Sorry Eds.”

Eddie looks at him like he’s crazy, reaching out to grab at his arm before he can move.

“What are you talking about? I haven’t even patched you up yet - and don’t fucking argue with me, I _know_ you haven’t iced your face. Come on, into the bathroom.”

Eddie tugs at his arm, and Richie follows along obediently, perching himself in his familiar position up on the bathroom sink while Eddie rifles around one of many first aid kits he has stashed around everywhere he goes. Watching Eddie go through the routine motions goes a long way toward soothing Richie, even if the act seems counterproductive given how busted up his face typically is in these scenarios. But it’s in moments like these that Richie feels safe to turn himself off, pack away the joker and comedian to just exist and let himself be the centre of attention in a way he doesn’t have to worry about. Richie spends so much time playing the jokester to keep everybody from looking too closely at the other parts of himself, ones he doesn’t feel as safe showcasing to the world, that he’s always so _on_ , 24/7. But here, in quiet dark moments like these, with just him and Eddie, Richie feels safe to let down his defences a bit.

Eddie wets his hands under the quietly running water of the sink, washing them thoroughly before he soaps up a handcloth to wipe gently at the cuts on Richie’s face where he’d fallen and scraped himself after Bill’s punch. It’s his own fault for not bracing himself for it, but then again he’d never felt like he had to brace himself for pain at the hands of Bill.

When Eddie is satisfied that the wounds have been cleaned enough that infection and scarring aren’t a worry, he gently dabs them dry and breaks out the antiseptic to spread along the cuts. He hands Richie one of those breakable instant cold packs, crunching into the bag for him before he passes it along to press to the bruises on his own face. The final step is the bandages that are smoothed carefully over the cuts, and Richie can’t help himself when he leans forward, eyes still shut, to press his face into Eddie’s gentle, healing hands. Eddie holds his hands still there, allowing Richie the moment. When his thumb swipes down Richie’s cheek, he tries again to broach the subject of what exactly went down earlier. 

“What’d you say to him, Rich?” Eddie asks quietly. “Why would he hit you like that?”

Richie sucks his lower lip into his mouth, chewing anxiously on the soft skin there before letting out the breath he’s been holding. There’s no real way to explain what he had been trying to do by telling Bill what he had without also telling him about the Voices, about Georgie, about his own fucking _father_. And another small, selfish part of him just doesn’t want Eddie to be disappointed in him.

“I told him that Georgie was dead,” Richie tells him just as quietly, almost in a whisper, like he was confessing to a priest. “And that he’s going to get the rest of us killed too. And I - I told him that even if he couldn't save Georgie, he can still save himself.”

Eddie is silent for a moment before he lets out a gust of breath, looks helplessly at Richie. “Oh, Rich. Why would you say that to him?”

 _Because it’s true!_ Richie wants to scream _Because I know it, and it’s not fair and I don’t want to, but I promised Georgie and he’s going to get himself killed and he’s going to get_ **_you_ ** _killed if he keeps dragging us along like this and I never wanted this ability but if I could use it to save you then maybe it would be worth something for once in my life._

“Because I don’t want to die, Eddie!” Richie bursts out, head falling to rest his eyes on the wrists of his balled-up hands. “And I don’t want _you_ to die. I didn’t say it to hurt Bill’s feelings, I just want him to stop and _think_ for a minute about how fucking dangerous this is. Do you think Georgie would want him to get himself killed for this wild fucking goose chase?”

“You won’t die,” Eddie says fervently, eyes blazing with sudden determination, bottom lip stuck out in a stubborn pout. “Listen to me. I won’t let you, okay? _Neither_ of us will, not if we stay together. Hey -” he shakes Richie by the arm, “Sleep here tonight. We can figure it all out in the morning.”

And he takes Richie by the wrist, small fingers circling around it, tugging him out of the bathroom and toward his room. Fuck Sonia Kaspbrak. The two of them will share the bed tonight, and they’ll only feel all the better and safer for it, neither one of them infected by whatever mysterious affliction it is that so possesses her.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the chapter count.. may have gone up. This is because chronically i cannot shut up and 1989 will simply have to span multiple chapters


	4. 1989 (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I’m in the hallway again, I’m in the hallway. The radio’s playing my favourite song. Leave the lights on. Keep talking. I’ll keep walking toward to the sound of your voice._
> 
> Richard Siken, You Are Jeff

Alright. Well Richie’s feeling pretty okay about things right now, all things considered. The sun is shining. His face is all clean and bandaged up. The birds… still aren’t singing, but hey, a little peace and quiet never hurt anyone. Eddie is safe and sound at home, even if he is still locked up tight, and that’s one less thing for him to worry about as he leaves his room that morning, scaling back down the old elm tree and hopping the fence.

But most importantly, he’s determined to get this whole stupid feud over with and speak to his friends again, starting with Bill. Because Bev was right - they all need to be together if they have any chance at all of making it out of this summer alive, not to mention he needs to be around in case they start searching around town again and the Voices have something to say. And - well really, he just wants to see his friends again. That's what it comes to in the end, more than anything else.

Staying over at Eddie’s house overnight had done him a world of good, unintentional though the visit was. Without Sonia's hawk-eyes watching, both Richie and Eddie had been able to get more than two hours of sleep between them, more than he suspects either one of them has managed since this whole fucking thing began. Best of all, Richie didn’t even have to sleep on his usual assigned spot on the floor, and with Eddie’s warmth pressed up against his side all night long, his most recent pervasive nightmares of a boy with black bile pouring out of his mouth and the sharp clean _snap_ of an arm haven’t made an appearance once. 

This optimistic spirit is what’s brought him here now, whistling some of Abram’s old timey tunes to himself as he makes his way down Witcham Street towards Bill’s. He knew as soon as he had woken up this morning that he needed to talk to him, to apologize for his careless words that didn’t become any less cruel just because they were well-intentioned. He can't explain to him about Georgie's part in this, but he can at least try to mend the wounds that have sprung up between them.

Bill isn’t expecting him, but Richie hopes that the element of surprise will work in his favour here. It’ll at least give him a bit of a head start in case Bill feels like going all Mike Tyson on him again - and if so, he’ll just have to humbly take his licks and beg help from Eddie again - his soft hands on his face again bandaging him up, oh _no_.

There’s something that Dorothy says to him sometimes - ‘the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry’. It’s from one of the poems he brought over to read to her and her friend once. And the principle is apparently no different with the living and the dead.

What makes this clear to him is that he hasn't heard Georgie’s voice since that first July night, which is why it startles him right out of his tracks to hear him again now.

 _Richie!_ Georgie shouts, and he sounds past frantic, _Richie, it took Bill, It took him, he’s gone!_

Fuck.

For one terrible second, Richie wants to just keep walking. To just - _Oh, sorry pal, didn’t hear ya… anyways, I'll have to catch you later, you know how it is!_

It’s just - he’d been so _happy_ today for the first time all summer. And what’s more, he’s tired - truly, fully, bone-deep tired of always being the one to pick up the phone and get the message, to have to read the signs, to try to divine the future from a few dead Voices. Would it really be so bad to just keep walking, to pretend it’s just like any other day where he’s on his way to Bill’s to hang out and play some Pac-Man?

Well it would be nice. But he wouldn’t be Richie if he chose to do that. 

So what Richie really does is trip over his feet, gangly limbs gone all askew, first in surprise and then in his haste to scramble over to the storm grate. 

“ _What_?” Richie says, chest constricting as he looks over towards Bill’s house. There’s no car in the driveway, and the windows _are_ dark, but - “Georgie, are you sure? Eddie called him, like... right before I left to see if he was home, and he seemed fine, he seemed okay. That was only ten minutes ago.”

 _He’s right, kid,_ a new voice says, sounding right over top of where Georgie’s had just been. _Dragged ‘im right down into the dark and the muck, I saw it meself._

What?

“...Abram?” Richie asks, freezing right where he kneels. It... doesn’t make any sense that he would hear Abram’s voice here, right now. It’s impossible. This spot isn’t where he was buried - not even close; Richie’s house is at least a ten minute bike ride from Bill’s, and that’s rule number one. The only thing that had never changed about the Voices. 

_Listen to him, little rabbit,_ Viktor’s voice now instructs, replacing Abram who had replaced Georgie. Strange, not just because of the location, but because he’s never called Richie by the English equivalent of that term before. _You must go down there to retrieve your friend._

The question isn't whether or not Richie is willing to go down into the sewers for Bill. But there are just too many red flags flying. None of these people were buried here. And hell, Viktor was the one who had initially warned Richie out of the path of danger at the beginning of all this anyway. And - and Abram can’t have seen anything, because _the dead don’t have eyes_. None of this can be right.

“That - doesn’t make any sense,” Richie says, backing slowly away from the storm grate where the Voices are all coming from, glitching out from how they all begin to overlap and interrupt each other. “None of you should be here but Georgie. And Georgie never wanted _any_ of us to go down into the sewers.”

The air around Richie turns cold, not at all right for the height of summer. He tries to turn around, but it’s as if creeping tendrils of ice have him rooted to the spot where he stands. 

_It’s a shame kid, a real damn shame you said that,_ Abram tells him, but even as he speaks his voice is morphing into something higher-pitched and more unstable. Something not Abram at all. _Seeing as we was willing to do this nicely, and all._

Well, hey. Looks like Richie was right. 

But he doesn’t get the chance to appreciate his good instincts even if they did come to nothing, because the last thing he sees is Bill’s shocked face standing at his window when he looks up after his face slams down into the asphalt. He only has a half second to feel the relief that he's safe at home after all before huge yellow eyes fill his vision and

everything

goes

black.

\----

_Plink._

_Plink._

_Plink._

Riche groans.

There is a sharp sensation pulling at the skin of his cheek, and it’s only when he rolls over trying to find his bearings that he realizes it’s a rock cutting into the soft flesh of his face. When he tries to sit up, his head is so dizzy he nearly goes right back down again. There is a cold and wet dripping running down his back, and he doesn’t necessarily want to open his eyes to find out why.

What the fuck, what the fuck, what the _fuck?_ Where is he?

Not a helpful question. So he gives himself to the count of three before he forces himself to open his eyes and inspect his surroundings to out for himself.

The - room? cavern? _tunnel?_ \- that he’s in is circular in shape, dark and wet stone curving around where he's sat up now, small and shaking against one of the back walls. The dripping sensation that he’d felt comes from something thicker than water but thinner than slime that crawls slowly down the stone before falling down to spread against his clothes, chilling him to the bone before he even had the chance to wake up. And it’s quiet in here, more quiet than anywhere Richie can ever remember being in his whole life. Not one faint Voice can be heard echoing through the walls, not a single greeting arising from underneath his feet. The lack that feels chilling and unnatural given the thick stench of death that hangs from the walls of this place like a plague. 

The faint light that streams down from a huge grate above his head might have been a relief to Richie, the one hint that the real world still existed outside of these walls and the only source of light around for miles, were it not for what it illuminates. 

Bodies. Hundreds of little bodies, some familiar and some he’s never seen before, but all children, and he can hazard a guess where they’ve all come from. They all circle slowly around a tremendous mound of trash and children's toys that rises up like a snow-peaked mountain to reach up to the sunlight let in through the iron bars above. He’s rooted in place, struck by the terrible and hypnotic rhythm of these bodies. Richie has to force himself to stifle the scream in his throat when Georgie’s smooth and blank face floats by him, eyes pure white and staring unseeingly forward forever. He closes his eyes against he yellow galoshes, that small raincoat that the seven of them had searched the town so carefully for.

Fuck, shit. He has to find a way out of here. He doesn’t want to be one of those bodies floating underneath the town forever, his parents and friends never knowing what became of him.

He’s all of six years old again. He can almost hear the settlers. He just doesn’t want to be missing.

Richie tries to take deep breaths in to steady himself, but his breathing has already started to pick up in a way familiar to him from years of watching Eddie kill the same instinct with the empty promise of his aspirator. But Richie doesn’t have an inhaler down here, nor even an Eddie. All he has is himself and the persistent nagging in the back of his head that there’s something he should be remembering right now. The thought of Eddie had brought it to mind, but his fear is proving a demolition expert now, the rapid thrumming of his heart erasing all proof of rational thought before it has a chance to build a foundation. 

_Think_ , Richie says to himself, _think, come on. You have to get out of here somehow._

Eddie… Eddie’s house… the tree from last night - Eddie’s father. That's it.

What was it Frank had said to him? _The_ _monster that calls itself Pennywise feeds off of fear and belief._ Well - Richie must be a full fucking three-course meal right now, with how scared he’s felt since waking up down here. That doesn’t help him. But Frank wouldn’t have told him that if there wasn’t some way it could help him, some way he could twist and spin it to help himself, and all of them if need be.

He’s not going to feel any less scared as long as he's stuck down here. That much is certain. So - maybe it’s the belief bit he can use. 

“Okay,” Richie says, out loud now for the first time, trying to lend the thought some extra credence, “I… I believe I’ll find a way out of here.”

He waits. Nothing happens; no illuminated path opens up to him, and no hot air balloon descends from the sky to pick him up and spirit him away. What a shitty deal.

What else had Frank said? _The more you all stand together..._ together… that’s the key.

 _Okay,_ Richie thinks, in his head this time, the one moment of bravery that allowed him to speak out loud before gone and evaporated with the wind. _I believe my friends will come to find me and that we’ll all get out of here together. I do believe that. I believe it, I believe they’ll come to find me._

I believe that Bill will always come to find me, no matter how much we fight. I believe in the goodness and rightness and strength of Big Bill, the boy who held my hand in Neibolt and swore to me that I wouldn’t go missing. I believe in Bill who always lets me ride double on Silver, and trusts me enough to cry in front of me. I wasn’t lying when I told him that one day I hope I’ll get good enough to earn his love.

I believe that Eddie would never leave me alone in the dark. I believe there isn’t a single thing in this whole world that could hurt me that Eds wouldn’t be able to patch me up from. I believe in the Eddie who teaches us everyday that some things are worth doing even if there’s a risk, I believe in the boy who spends all of his life being told that he’s weak and frail but is still the first one to run to any of our defence. I believe that Eddie is our compass in the dark, that he’ll always lead us to where we need to be, and that he’ll lead me right out of this cold and dark place and back home safe and sound. 

I believe that Stanley Uris always comes through for me, even if he’s scared. I believe in my oldest friend, the one who always listens to me and trusts me and protects me in his way. I believe that the boy who watches the birds will have the patience and grace to figure out where I am, and that with Eddie he will lead me out of this cave as quietly and as gentle as helping a baby robin ensnared in a net.

I believe that Mike Hanlon is the salt of the earth. I believe that this boy who couldn’t kill a lamb, but could chuck a rock as strong as anyone, knows the time and the price of doing the right thing. I believe that even if somebody told him to leave me, to let me die, that it’s my time, that he’ll always lower the gun and offer me a hand instead. 

I believe in Ben Hanscom. Didn’t he run with Bev and I to beat the devil, didn’t he catch Eddie safe in his arms that day? I believe that Ben Hanscom will catch me in his arms if I fall into a hidden trap. I believe Ben Hanscom would dig a thousand trenches to cross No-Man’s Land and find me a way home. 

I believe that nobody on earth is tough enough to stop Bev from coming down here. I believe that Bev was smarter than any of us - didn’t she know first that the only way we could get anything done was if we all stood together? And she didn’t need to be told it by anyone else, not like I did. I believe that Bev’s a good guy, a true-blue pal to the end.

And most of all, I believe that all of them - all of us - together, can figure this out and beat this monster that's haunting us. I believe it, I believe it, I believe it. 

“Together,” Richie murmurs to himself over and over, just like that day in front of the City Centre, telling himself _it’s not real it’s not real it’s not real_. “Together, together. Together”

As he speaks, a rumbling noise cuts through the air around him, and the ground begins to shake. Richie flings his eyes open and throws himself to the nearest wall of the cave, grabbing onto a jagged spike of rock and daring to believe that this noise heralds his friends coming to find him. That his belief was strong enough to shake the earth. 

But the shape appearing out of the dark and wet of the cave, right in the centre of the storm, isn’t any one of his friends. Not at all.

The clown jerks stumbling over to him, intentionally grotesque in his movements and rhythm, grinning a shark’s mouth of razor-sharp teeth over where Richie stands shaking against the wall. Richie looks desperately around him, but his belief obviously wasn’t strong enough, because he’s still just as locked in where he stands as a rat in a trap. As locked in as an Eddie in a Kaspbrak trap. 

“What was that, Richie?” Pennywise taunts, his voice high-pitched and obviously delighted by the situation they’ve found themselves in. The same sound he had made that day in Neibolt, appearing out of the dark in the puppet room, beeping him and revelling in his screams. “What’s that you’re muttering over there - ‘ _together?_ ’ Together, together, together. I know that one too! _The more we get together, together, together, the more we get together, the happier we’ll be! ‘Cause MY friends are YOUR friends and YOUR friends are MY friends, the more we get together, the happier we’ll be!”_

Holy fuck, Richie thinks. This clown is going to murder me, and he’s going to do it singing Raffi. 

But he doesn’t lunge towards him. He doesn’t pierce him or bite him or rip him apart, as easily as he could if he wanted to. He obviously wants to play with his food a bit before he eats it, because instead, as he sings, six familiar spectres are appearing out of thin air around him, exact carbon copies of all of his friends down to the last freckles. At first they all look the same, as if created from the same mould, but when one begins to take form faster than all the others, Richie makes the mistake of holding eye contact with it the longest. 

“Oh,” Richie says out loud to the echoing stone around him, voice weak as he stares at the apparition. “It’s Stan.”

Or it might have been, in a world where Stan’s kind face and curious eyes were hardened and turned cruel with anger. Where Richie had done something bad enough to possibly earn that kind of hatred. The fake Stan looks at Richie like a bug at the bottom of his shoe. He’s so grotesquely, unnaturally spiteful that Richie is too distracted to even look at any of the others before it speaks to him.

“Beep Beep, Richie,” Not-Stan says, mouth twisted in a snarl as he looks down his nose to where Richie stills lies huddled against the wall, now slowly lowering himself to the ground, “Why do you always have to be talking so much? I’m glad it’s you down here, you know. If it had to be any of us, I’m glad that it’s you that was taken.”

Richie halts in his attempts to crawl backwards and away, flinching at his words. 

“Y-You’re not Stan,” Richie tries, ignoring the sharp ache in his chest at the sight of his oldest friend - even a fake one - saying this to him. “I called my real friends down here to find me. And you’re not them.”

He’s trying to sound more confident than he really is, but it’s difficult. Part of him is scared that his stupid belief experiment really _did_ manifest his friends here, to this place, but that it manifested them here _wrong_. 

Not-Stan steps aside dismissively, making way for another one of his friends to step up to the bat. 

“Why did you c-call us down here, Richie?” Not-Bill says, his usually kind face downturned in a disappointed grimace, “Do you want us to d-die, too? Huh? You want us t-too?”

“No!” Richie shouts, his voice shaking, even though he _knows_ this isn’t really Bill, that Bill wouldn’t really think that of him. “No, shut _up_ , I don’t want that, of course I don’t want that!”

Or would he? Everything is so backwards, so terrifying and confusing in this place, that there’s no way to know for real. It’s a nightmare whether or not any of it really is happening, but Richie sure would prefer it if this all turned out to be just a bad dream in the end. 

He tries to scramble backwards on his hands and knees again, the renewed effort like some kind of desperate crab trying to beat the nets trying to ensnare him, trying to get as far away as he possibly can from these terrible, cruel friends of his. But he doesn't back up very far before his back hits another solid shape, and when he whirls around to see what it is, he can already feel his whole heart sinking. 

“That’s not very nice, Bill,” Not-Eddie says, black eyes glittering and cruel mouth upturned, a falsely reprimanding tone to his voice. His hand comes down deceptively soft on Richie’s shoulder. He has a terrible feeling that Pennywise heard the entirety of his internal monologue earlier, has taken it and warped it to hurt him as much as possible. “Look, you’ve hurt his feelings. How about a kiss better, Richie? Hm? Don’t you want a kiss from me?”

Richie wants to run - _tries_ to run - he wants to scream, but something in his shitty little thirteen year-old body is stuck, horrified and intrigued in equal measure by the sight of _any_ Eddie looking at him and saying that. As if he’s allowed to. As if that’s something any boy can say to Richie, let alone something _Eddie Kaspbrak_ can say. It’s the cruelest thing Pennywise has shown him so far. 

But... maybe it really is okay, because Eddie’s eyes are shifting now away from the empty black of before and into something else. Richie tracks the morphing colours, almost hypnotized by the swirling hues, waiting for the soft brown he knows to appear, but he should have run when he had the chance. Because it’s not turning into his warm brown at all. This time, his eyes have turned pure

  
  
  
  


white

  
  
  
  
  


Richie has existed in these lights for centuries. Kingdoms have risen and fallen in the time since Not-Eddie’s eyes brought him here, and entire planets will burn before he finds his way out. The surroundings are formless and the sounds are non-existent. There is just Richie, and even that identification is feeling farther and farther away from meaning anything substantial at all, a loss he can’t feel enough to fight for.

There’s nothing here that could be even mistaken for typical the flow of time. The images that he sees are confused and scattered, barely allowing him time to grasp onto one scene before it shifts to the next. 

Blood dripping onto porcelain tile, blood spattered onto wet rocks, blood poured over doorways. In one a squarish-looking man is crying in what looks like the quarry, in another he’s camped outside the gates of Neibolt with five others stationed around him like the worst kind of sentries. In some scenes there are seven figures, but in just as many others there are six, or five. Old and young, defeated and triumphant, grief-stricken and ebullient, but always, always fighting, and always beginning in that cave. 

Eddie is crashing his car. Stanley is taking a bath. Richie is puking on stage. Bev is throwing a table. Ben is blinking into a camera, seeing nothing. Bill is st-st-stuttering for the first time in decades. Mike is drowning in a necessary guilt. Richie is driving into town, only just a little older than he is now. Eddie is lowering a phone, looking over at his mother and remembering breaking the imaginary tether that ties him to her in a town much smaller than New York City. Bev is in the back of a sewing room, stabbing herself with a needle and staring into a different blood. Stanley’s head is held in the lap of an equally-kind looking girl, reciting a terrible truth nowhere near a bathroom. Ben walks out of a lecture hall in a daze. Bill is opening a notebook, feverishly writing down the images as they come to him. Mike is lowering his own phone, shocked into silence by the identity of the caller.

A colossal lake turtle is swimming idly by in the air. _Are you listening, Richie? Are you paying attention?_ A young, wily-looking cowboy sits perched atop a speckled horse, gun pointed bullseye into his field of vision, _You oughta get those ears cleaned out, pal, this is real important stuff._ An elderly gentleman, fur hat dwarfing his spindly frame, _If you really are one,_ _malen'kiy krolik_ _, you must be swift and clever like one._ Two sweet-looking ladies, hands intertwined so that the gold and silver bands contrast, _‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood’ - which one will make all the difference?_ A familiar man, kind but sombre, eyes that overtake the face with an arm outstretched to him, _Richie, if you love him, this is how._

One second it’s all of this at once, swirling in his head like memory soup, impossible to pick apart, and the next he’s slamming down into cold, damp stone. The fall knocks the wind right out of him, and he can barely see, let alone hear, through the ringing in his ears and the panic that comes flooding back into his chest as he exits that unearthly realm.

Richie lies there, weak and gasping into the damp ground as his breath returns to him gradually. There is noise around him, he can tell, but it’s all muffled and muted through the blood rushing to his head. If anything is still planning on killing him here, now’s the time, because he couldn’t move if God himself came down to tell him to. 

Except when he looks up, it’s something worse than God come to earth to reprimand him. 

Eddie is still standing there, along with the other five of his friends, all staring at him with eyes wide and faces streaked with dirt. Pennywise had apparently taken the time while he was floating to put a few more realistic touches on them, because Richie can see the familiar brown he had been aching for only - minutes? hours? seconds? years? - ago in Not-Eddie’s eyes, and behind him Stan’s face is bloody and Bill’s already crying. 

Richie flings a hand out - for what he doesn’t know, but he’s come crashing down to fall near the trash pile that overtakes the centre of the chamber, and who knows what he’ll find but he has to take the opportunity while he has it - and grabs a baseball bat that lies sticking out of the pile. He raises the bat behind his head - _batter’s up folks, it’s Tozier up now and what’ll he do? -_ but he’s frozen. He can’t do it.

It turns out that Richie can’t even hit a fake-Eddie, and Pennywise must know this, because for the entire second that his fist is raised before it inevitably falters, the small beloved figure in front of him doesn’t even flinch. Just keeps staring at him, mouth parted slightly open, and eyes wide. His fingers are raised to his mouth and he’s blushing now, and he looks - more scared _for_ Richie than _of_ him, which is so true to life that Richie almost wants to believe that it’s the real deal standing there in front of him. But he won’t. He can’t. He can’t be weak now. He’d already done that once, and look where it got him. 

“Oh, very fucking clever,” Richie spits at the apparition, eyes wild and wet. “Got the eyes right this time, have you?”

Not-Eddie looks bewildered, staring at Richie for a moment, before turning around to stare at the others, who look just as confused. All scared, too. But now mostly confused. Not-Eddie turns slowly around to stare again at Richie. 

“Richie,” Not-Eddie says, and Richie flinches, bracing himself for whatever vitriol will come out of his mouth next. “Rich, it’s - it’s me. It’s just me. It’s okay now, we’re here, it’s okay.”

This is worse. He wishes Pennywise had stuck to the verbal poison. 

“No!” Richie screams, “You’re not him, you’re not Eddie, you’re just a fucking mimic, and I _don’t believe you!_ ”

Not-Eddie reaches out for him, but Richie is quicker. He may be too fucking lovestruck and stupid to hurt even a doppelganger version of his friend, but he’s not just going to stand here and let himself be killed either. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, but no sweet words will entice _him_ into a willing death. 

There’s a small opening to his left, a crack where if he tries hard enough, he’d probably be able to fit himself. That’s where he guns for, ignoring the screaming shouts of his friends as he bashes hard into the stone wall and crawls desperately into the opening, backing up until he hits hard stone and is assured that nothing will be able to creep up behind him. 

For two blissful moments he’s able to sit there like that, knees bent up to his eyes, one arm gripping desperately around both legs and the other still white-knuckling the bat. Two sweet minutes until he can hear the voices of his friends outside the crack, trying to figure out how one of them can get _in_ or how one of them can get him _out_. He tries to ignore it, think of how he’s supposed to get past them and out of this place, but they sound so much like the real Losers that he can feel his resolve growing weaker by the second. 

“I think you should go in there, E-Eddie,” Not-Bill says, trying to whisper but still clearly audible from where Richie sits. 

“What? Why Eddie?” Not-Bev whispers back. Richie thinks the argument is going to made for Eddie being the smallest of all of them, but that’s not what happens.

Instead Not-Stan snorts, still apparently able to chirp Richie in the face of imminent death. “Didn't you see? Because Richie wouldn’t whack even a monster-Eddie with a bat.”

Well - that’s a little unfair, Richie thinks mulishly, even though that’s not the real Stan in front of him saying this. He could totally hit a fake-Eddie. Just because he didn’t earlier doesn’t mean he _never_ could. Like - if the real Eddie were there and in trouble, Richie could hit Fake-Eddie to protect him. Next time he would for sure, anyway. 

“Okay,” Not-Eddie readily agrees from outside the crack, and Richie’s hand tightens on the handle of the bat, immediately forgetting the resolve he had only just made. When he peeks over the top of his knees, he can see a darkened but familiar shape stooping down to look into the hole Richie has fit himself into, grimacing as the weight of his cast-arm is put against the ground. When he's fit himself into the opening enough to be visible, he speaks. 

“Rich,” Not-Eddie says softly, not coming any further into the tunnel, but planting himself right in the entrance so that Richie wouldn’t be able to get out without his cooperation anyway. “I swear it’s really me. Please come out, I promise you it’s okay.”

Richie swallows, voice wavering while he repeats to himself in his head to stay strong, not be fooled by Pennywise’s pathetic tricks. 

“You’re _not_ ,” he responds, sob catching in his throat because fuck, he wants it to be the real Eddie so bad. He can already feel himself weakening despite all of his effort, but it’s not his fault. He’s just so fucking - scared and tired and upset. He could use his best friend. “You’re not. You’re _not_. Go away, you’re not him!”

He even kicks his feet out violently, as if that would do anything to stop a Pennywise-disguised-as-Eddie intent on devouring him. There’s no room to swing his bat, though, and the small action makes him feel better about the sum of his pathetic efforts thus far.

And he’s not stupid. He remembers the Eddie at Neibolt well enough, how _that_ had looked and sounded just like him too, until his eyes had glazed over and black bile had spilled from his mouth. And because of that, the real Eddie had been stuck in a different room, all alone and just about to have a bone snapped clean in half. He won't make that mistake again. 

“Richie, _Richie_ , it’s me, I promise it is,” Not-Eddie says, “What will it take for you to believe me? I swear to god Rich, I promise it’s me. I’d never lie to you.”

The scrunched form wavers. 

“Prove it.” Richie mutters mulishly, baseball bat still pointed uselessly forward in his hands.

Not-Eddie pauses with his good hand still stretched out toward him, clearly trying to figure out how he’s supposed to prove himself here. Richie watches in grotesque curiosity, wondering how he’d be able to trust that it wasn’t Pennywise no matter _what_ this apparition chooses to do. The rest of their friends - _maybe_ \- are waiting behind him, less visible than he is at the end of the small passage Richie had scrunched himself into, but still visible enough to be witness to what’s going on here. With a shake of his head, the Eddie in front of him seems to come to a decision and he meets Richie’s eyes steadily, a small smile incredibly present on his face despite their circumstances.

“ _Kotki dwa, szarobure obydwa_ ,” Eddie sings softly, hand not wavering from where it is still held out patiently to him, “ _nic nie będą robiły, tylko ciebie bawiły._ ”

And that’s - that has to be good enough for Richie, not least because he doesn’t want to consider the possibility that Pennywise might be trying to sing him a lullaby right now. Nobody else knows about that song, which - is a stupid argument when it’s about Pennywise, he knows, but he refuses to believe that it’s been tainted by his theft. That song isn’t for him, or anyone. It’s _theirs_. He forgets his earlier worries about not being able to trust that it’s Eddie either way and lets out the sob he’d been holding in, scrambling out on hands and knees to grasp finally at Eddie’s hand, and Eddie takes it like a lifeline, like he won’t let go for anything, pulling Richie in and enveloping him in his arms.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he says, stroking Richie’s hair back from his face as he cries, “Shhh. It’s okay. It’s okay now, Rich, I’ve got you. You’re okay.”

I’m not, Richie thinks, I’m really, really not. But it doesn’t matter, because either way he doesn’t want to ever let go of the boy in front of him. They rock together like that for minutes, but very quickly he has to let go, because there are other hands grasping for him now, pulling him in and pressing clenched fingers into his hair and shirt. Stan’s grip is particularly tight, grasping onto him as if he’d dissipate if he let go, and Richie remembers the poison Fake-Stan had spit at him and wonders in that second how he had ever let it get to him.

After Bill’s turn, once he finally lets go, he unties a sweater that had been knotted around his waist, shaking out the arms and directing Richie’s arms into it. He doesn’t meet Richie’s eyes as he does so, a guilty frown painted across his face. 

“H-Here, Rich,” Bill says, “You - you dropped this earlier, on your way to my house. I b-brought it with us. In case you needed it.”

Richie bursts into tears again, startling his friends, but struck by the care embodied in that small action. “Why are you such a fucking _big brother,_ Bill, I swear to _god_."

Ben lets out a disagreeing noise. “I don’t know. It was Stan who almost threatened to stab me when I suggested that we calm down and think about how we should go about finding you. And Eddie who almost _did_ the stabbing.”

Richie expects Stan to blush at this, to brush off the accusation with an eyeroll, a dismissive _Well we need somebody around to beep after all._ But Stan doesn’t do any of that; he just shrugs and looks back at Richie like - like, _duh, what else did you think would I do?_

And he’s not even going to touch the ‘Eddie’s brotherly instincts towards him’ with a ten-foot pole, god love Ben.

Mike snorts, clearly trying to stifle it and save the moment between them, but the aborted noise seems to be the cue they all need to burst into relieved laughter, coming together again to grip onto each other in what has to be the world’s filthiest group hug to date. 

For a second after they part, it really seems like everything will be okay. That the fact that they are now all here together will be enough alone to clear a shining path to outside, and this whole thing will fade like a bad dream in the daylight. 

No such luck. Because after that everything happens very fast. 

The ground rumbles again, and when rocks start to crumble down above them the seven of them have to run to duck for cover. The clown returns, and then _Georgie_ appears, and that’s fucking horrifying for a whole host of reasons. When he makes reference to Richie’s talks with him, though, Richie is relieved that the others seem to just take this as conversations they must have had while he was stuck down here alone. That doesn’t do anything to make it hurt less to watch Bill pull the trigger on that little face, and fall to the ground in devastation after. 

And when Pennywise grips Bill around the neck, held tightly in his arms and grinning evilly at the rest of them, every heart in that cavern stops all at once. 

“J-Just go, you guys,” Bill says, his voice weak from the grip Pennywise has on his throat, face fallen as he realizes the position he’s been caught in, so far from the jubilant hope of only a few minutes ago. “This is all my f-fault, all of it has b-been. G-Go.”

The others are breathing heavily, but none of them respond. Instead they all turn to Richie who stands closest to Bill, baseball bat still held tightly gripped in his fist, wood heaving up and down with him with the force of his own breaths. As if it’s his call to make, when Richie can name five people in this cavern who would have some choice words for him if he were to abandon Bill now. 

Richie makes eye contact with Bill, staring straight into his eyes. Big Bill Denbrough. Georgie’s Billy. His friend Bill, who had punched him bloody in the face only yesterday. His eyes are already resigned, closing slowly now as if hoping to miss the last second before his fate is sealed, and for the life of him Richie just can’t understand _why_.

“None of you would be here if it wasn’t for m-me,” Bill says, eyes still closed but a single tear now cutting down his cheek, and Pennywise’s smile widens further.

Maybe, Richie thinks, maybe. But do you really I would be here at all without _you_? Derry would have killed me years ago all by myself. This shared hell is just another stop on the road, and it’s fucking stupid to think we wouldn’t make it for you. 

He doesn't say any of this. 

“Nah,” Richie says instead, “You kidding? I’m with you to the end, Big Bill.”

And he swings the bat as hard as any baseball player on the TV ever has, home fucking run baby, to crack right - _splat_ \- in the centre of Pennywise’s ugly fucking head. _No foul balls here, no sirree!_ The Tracker Brothers would be proud. 

Eddie screams like a feral little banshee boy, kicking Pennywise’s face with the toe of small blue KangaRoos, those stupid pockets flapping open with the force of his kick. Next stop is the fucking Olypmics for the two of them, holy shit. 

Mike shoots the clown point-blank in the forehead with a bolt that has mysteriously reloaded itself. 

Bev stabs a fencepost right through his eye, and she’s braver than he’s ever been because she does it while it looks exactly like her father. 

Ben loads up rocks in his hands just like back at the river, launching them one right after the other to hit him before he ever has the chance to turn back to swipe at another one of them. 

Bill and Stan are screaming encouragements from the sidelines, throwing in their own kicks and punches and elbows as necessary, eyes bright and feverish with the hope of a fight possible to win.

Eddie’s hand still hasn’t left Richie’s when the clown stumbles over for the final time, weak and beaten by the heat of the ending summer and the force of their combined love and belief. The seven of them are breathing heavy, dizzy and high with the adrenaline of their fight, as they watch his form shrink and liquify. But- 

_Aw, shucks,_ the faint voice of Pennywise can be heard even as his liquid form slithers down the drain to hibernate for another long rest. _Bad luck. See you later, losers._

Richie grips tight onto the hand still entwined with his own and tries his hardest not to think about the memories still playing like a film reel in his head. Flashes that only show six figures, or five. And the huddled, broken form in every single one whose identity he can hazard a pretty confident guess at.

And that night, when he thunders up the stairs of his house, slamming open the door and gasping with the force of his relief and his mother stumbles into the front room, hand held to her heart as she recovers from the surprise of his loud entrance and tells him he’s stomping around loud enough to wake the dead, Richard, for god’s sake, he just falls to the ground and laughs. And laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

  
  



	5. 1992

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I want to tell you this story without having to confess anything, without having to say that I ran out into the street to prove something, that he didn't love me, that I wanted to be possessed, thrown over, that I wanted to have the wounds nailed shut._
> 
> Richard Siken, The Torn-Up Road

_Tap._

_Tap._

_Tap._

_Tap_.

“Hey Rich, have you ever heard of the Dyatlov Pass?” Ben asks patiently, flipping through the pages of his book at his desk without looking over to where Richie lies facedown on his bed, flipping through his own and knocking on the wood of the headboard with one restless hand.

The two of them are lounging around Ben’s room right now, rifling through his books and waiting (patiently in Ben's case, impatiently in Richie's) for everybody else to show up so they can get their long-planned movie night started.

Richie isn't really listening, to be truthful, too excited for tonight to pay proper attention to the conversation, but it's not on purpose so Ben never minds too much. And it’s usually Bev or Bill who will help Ben set things up before everybody else arrives anyway, with Richie swinging by to pick Eddie up at his house on his way so that they can go over together to whoever’s hosting that night. He doesn’t exactly expect a lot out of Richie here.

But not tonight.

Eddie’s birthday is coming up next week. This movie night is actually the groups’ clever attempt to celebrate with him ahead of time in the more than likely event that Sonia keeps him locked up at home on his _actual_ birthday, and they don’t get the chance to see him or give him any of his presents. Collectively they figured that it's close enough to the actual day to count, but still far enough away that his mom won't suspect the reason behind the sleepover and keep him home.

Eddie knows all of this, of course. What he _doesn't_ know is what's waiting for him when he gets here. 

'What's waiting for him' also leads to why Richie is sitting here now, driving Ben up the wall with his foot and finger tappings, instead of biking over to Eddie’s to ferry him away. Because - forget the Hot Wheels, forget the mix tapes and Walkmans of years gone by - this year, for his sweet sixteen, Richie has gotten Eddie a present to beat all presents. A fucking gold medal of a birthday gift. A first in show, crème de la crème of a surprise, and he had needed to get it over here without Eddie asking any questions. 

Stan may be the one Richie goes to when he needs something kept secret - and he did - but Ben is always a safe bet to go to when you want the same with no wisecracks or interrogations, so it's just as well that it's his house they're all gathering at tonight. 

“Oh, sure,” Richie says absently, finally responding to Ben’s earlier question as he flips through the novel that he had grabbed off the bookshelf. It may be time to admit to himself that he simply doesn't have the attention span for it right now. “1959, right? Hiking expedition in Sverdlovsk Oblast. They put up camp in Kholat Syakhl, but something caused all nine hikers to tear out of their tents in the middle of the night and in the end all of them mysteriously died. Spooky.”

Ben doesn’t respond, and the silence stretches on so long that even Richie in his distracted state is moved to look up from his book, marking his place with a finger on the line. Good call, because Ben is staring at him, mouth open in confusion though Richie doesn't know what he's done to earn it. 

“What the hell?” Ben asks him. “You just... know a bunch of Russian town names? Off the top of your head?”

Oh. Oops. Better play that off. 

“Benjamin,” Richie says earnestly, rolling over to look straight at him, “I am not just a pretty face. The amount of obscure Russian knowledge that lives up in this here noggin would shock and surprise you."

Ben still looks a little like he's planning on asking more questions, so Richie adds: "It all comes from my past life as a Siberian prisoner after murdering an old pawnbroker for her money. I was sitting pretty until the guilt and paranoia overcame me and I was driven to confess my crimes."

“Amazing how your past life mirrors perfectly the plot of _Crime and Punishment_ ,” Ben snorts, but he drops the topic after that, so he supposes that’s mission accomplished. 

Richie makes a note to ask Viktor more about obscure Russian culture the next time they’re all at the Barrens, really give Ben a surprise. 

The fact that he can ask Viktor about anything at all still comes as a relief to him, even after all this time. And it had been a funny thing to realize, because hearing the Voices hadn't always been such a positive experience for Richie. If you had asked his ten year-old self whether or not he'd choose to keep hearing the dead if he had the chance to decide, he probably would have said no. That in the end he just wants to be normal, in this way if not in any others. But now he's not so sure.

The Voices have been his constant companions for so long that faced with the possibility that they could suddenly be gone forever, he had found himself scared of what a world that quiet would be like. And - hadn't they been helpful after all? Hadn't Frank Kaspbrak given him the clues to escape the cavern, didn't Viktor shepherd the four of them out of the forest that day? Were Abram's warnings worth nothing?

Because climbing out of the cavern on that terrible day in the summer of 1989 had been physically arduous enough of a task to occupy all of his mind. But it had struck him halfway home that he didn’t really know what would be waiting for him under his bed, let alone all across the rest of town. It was possible that the Voices had just been a manifestation of Pennywise’s all along, that all his life they had just been pawns in a long game that was always meant to culminate in Richie’s lifeless body floating under the town along with all the others. 

He hadn't even walked down Witcham Street to see Bill home like the rest of them, scared that Georgie's voice would be absent from the sewer grate and he'd have to face the the fact that his world could be silent forever sooner than he was ready to. 

But it hadn’t. And when Richie had finally gotten home that night, Abram had spoken to him as if waking up from a deep sleep, feeling the difference in the air of Derry and demanding to know what had happened that day. When Richie had told him about Pennywise borrowing his voice, the quiet apology for the role he unwittingly played was the most emotional he had ever heard Abram. 

Richie is shaken out of his thoughts by the sound of a door slamming somewhere downstairs. 

“Hey, where the fuck is everyone?” Eddie’s voice can be heard calling up the stairs as the door slams shut behind him, and presumably Bev who had gone to meet him in lieu of Richie. “And whose car is that out there?”

Richie’s responding grin lights up his whole face and Ben rolls his eyes at him, sending him a humouring smile from across the room.

“We’re coming!” Richie hollers back, and rolls his way off of the bed, waiting impatiently by the door of his room so that Ben can catch up and go with him downstairs. Ben just waves a hand to indicate that Richie should go ahead, and he does with a small whoop, flinging himself around and hurtling down the stairs so quick it makes Eddie shriek where he and Bev stand waiting for them at the bottom.

Richie steadies himself as he reaches them, fully intending to whip out his arms in a grand flourish and immediately announce his intent to present Eddie with his birthday gift, but what he had planned to say is wiped clean from his mind when he looks up and promptly chokes.

Instead of his usual shirt and shorts ensemble, Eddie is standing there in a comfy looking pale blue sweater atop which is clad a dark blue pair of overalls, carefully stitched by Bev. He's let his hair go untamed for once, small waves bouncing around his face and excitement for the tonight's sleepover gleaming in his eyes. 

He looks so fucking _cute, cute, cute!_ and Richie can’t handle it. But he does recognize that he’s been quiet for a little too long, so in a hurry he says the first thing that comes to mind. 

“Good!” Richie shouts, startling Ben who's only just now reaching the rest of them. “You, I mean. Look good. Uh. New outfit?”

Eddie is looking at him with a small smile growing at the side of his mouth, a small blush blooming on his cheeks, and Richie just knows that he's silently laughing at him. 

“Yeah,” he confirms, glancing over at Bev who _also_ looks like she’s laughing silently at his pain. Damn her loyalty. “Birthday gift from Bev. You like them?”

“Love 'em, Spaghetti Man.” Richie nods and they’re a little lost for a moment or two, sneaking oddly shy glances at each other while Ben and Bev wait awkwardly until they hear the voices of the other three arriving outside and Eddie’s brow furrows again as if pulled from his thoughts. 

“Oh yeah, whose car is that outside?” he asks, pointing a thumb toward the window. “Looks like the model Wentworth used to drive.” 

This is _it_.

Richie brightens at the comment, sharing a conspiratorial look with the others who have joined them and claps his hands together loudly, once again startling Eddie who levels him with a scowl. 

“A _great_ question, Eddie my love,” Richie says in an exaggeratedly posh accent that is steadily improving. It would be easier to go for Abram’s Western, or Viktor’s Russian, but he’s not a fucking coward. “How about you follow me outside and I’ll find that out for you?”

A beat passes in which Eddie stares at him, clearly confused as to why he can’t just answer the question like a normal person, but he eventually shrugs.

“Ooookay,” he answers slowly, glancing at Bev who gives him a blank look in response. A great sigh heaves from his chest as if this were some Herculean task they were all putting him up to, but he follows Richie without question nonetheless which Richie has always greatly admired about him.

The four of them tromp outside, grabbing Mike, Bill, and Stan along the way. When they reach the driveway, the seven of them stand silently for a second until Richie snaps his fingers in remembrance, reaching into his pocket to pull out a shiny but somewhat-crushed bow and placing it atop the hood.

“Ta-da!” Richie says.

He's grinning at Eddie who only stares blankly back at him.

“What am I supposed to be looking at?” Eddie asks, and Richie rolls his eyes. This is not exactly the image he had in his head when presenting Eddie with this gift, of all gifts. 

Not that the image he _did_ have in his head would ever happen in this lifetime, but still. A little more enthusiasm wouldn’t go amiss. Or at least Eddie being a little quicker on the uptake here.

“So you were right upstairs,” Richie says to him slowly, hoping that Eddie will start to get it soon as his grin threatens to burst across his face in his excitement. “This _is_ Went’s old car. It just looks different because it’s all fixed up and repainted now, for uh.”

Richie waits. Eddie stares silently at him.

“For you, you moron.” Richie finishes exasperatedly. “Happy birthday!”

“Bu- wha -” Eddie splutters, staring at the car, and then back at Richie. Back and forth, back and forth. He even spins around to stare at Stan, as if Richie is pulling some elaborate joke on him that the other boy will be able to explain, but Stan just grins at him too. “I thought...it’s... you were supposed to get Went’s old car when you turn sixteen! He’s - he's been saying that for years, I don't -“ 

His voice breaks off there, too overcome to continue speaking, so Richie does what he does best and steps up to fill the silence.

“Well...I mean, I did get it,” Richie says, shrugging. “Just a little bit earlier than I was supposed to. And anyways I told him that it’s not for me so that he’d give it to us with enough time to fix it up, get it looking all nice. It's all good. He just laughed and called me a chump because now I’ll have to buy my own car.”

That's true. Went and Maggie had been unsure at first when he initially told them about his plan, but it was hard to argue with the truth. Richie would always have the chance to get his own car some other time, would never have to worry about being forcibly kept from that level of freedom, or needing to make a quick escape if necessary. But Eddie would. Eddie does every day. And if Richie _didn't_ give him the car that's just been sitting there, free, waiting for him for years, then he knew he wouldn't get another chance. It's a nice birthday gift for sure, would be to anyone. But more importantly, if Richie can make sure that Eddie always has the option to get away if he needs to, if he can give him that small measure of peace, he always would. No question. 

And it's not like they could argue safety. Wentworth had been the teach Eddie how to drive in the first place when his own mom refused to allow him lessons, so he already knows the extent of Eddie's neurotic safety standards. 

So Richie just shrugs at his disbelief, but does think to jokingly add: “Though I do expect you to give me rides everywhere, anywhere I want, forever. There’s no way I have enough self-control to save up for a whole-ass car, like what the hell?”

Eddie is still silent. 

“And your mom obviously can’t know about it,” Stan adds from behind them. “So it’ll probably have to stay at Richie’s house when you’re not using it anyways.”

“So it is,” Richie holds up his fingers in bunny ear formation, “quote unquote ‘my car’. But actually it is your car.”

That sentence is when it seems to hit him. 

“You’re _shitting_ me,” Eddie gasps, whirling around to stare at Richie, grabbing him painfully by the arms, “Richie, tell me right now that you’re shitting me.”

“I’m shitting you,” Richie repeated dutifully, but grins when Eddie’s face immediately falls. “Of course I’m not, Eds, are you kidding? What a terrible fucking joke that would be. You of all people should know I can do better than that.”

Eddie’s mouth opens automatically to refute the claim, until he looks to his left once again and is reminded of the gift that is sitting there, courtesy of one Richard Wentworth Tozier, at which point he snaps it back shut. 

“Richie -” he looks at a complete loss for words, still shaking his head with eyes wide. They look shiny with tears, and Richie is dumbfounded. Eddie almost _never_ cries where somebody can see. “I can’t - this is so much. I can’t believe you did this for me.”

Although this was more along the lines of what Richie had been hoping for, now that he’s in the moment he’s mostly just feeling flustered. And horrifically _seen_. So he tries to deflect, to shift the focus onto everybody else standing there instead.

“Well everybody had a hand in it,” he says hastily, “Mike helped me fix it up like new for you, like mechanically, you know how useless I am about those things. And the others helped clean and repaint it, which took forever. So.”

“Thanks, Mike and the others,” Eddie says, but he's still staring directly at Richie, whose face is burning hotter than he’d like. (“No p-problem,” Bill says dryly from behind him. The lack of recognition seems to come not entirely as a surprise to them, but Richie makes a note to thank them all again later.)

And then he does something that Richie never expected to happen in a hundred years, not in a million. He leans carefully forward into Richie's space to press a small kiss right onto his cheek, right there in the public daylight of Ben’s mom’s driveway. When he pulls back, he’s grinning ear to ear, high on the reality of the love his friends envelope him in everyday, of having his own car and the freedom that it will afford him, of Richie standing there, acting infuriatingly like this whole thing is no big deal. 

Eddie turns away from him then to start talking to the others and take a look into the car for himself. By the time the tour is done and Richie is tugged to follow the others dizzily back into the house, he still hasn’t come back down to earth, his head spinning and his feet feeling like they’re walking on clouds. Stan laughs at him as he bashes into the doorway on the way in, but he doesn't even notice. A new car has nothing on this. Who's fucking birthday is it again?

  
  


\----

Despite the occasion, the Losers' movie night rules are sacred and tonight is Bill’s turn to pick the movie. This is almost a sure guarantee that they'll wind up having to watch some sort of gory slasher film or else some other weird horror-fest, and Richie is already preparing to sleep through half of them in order to conserve the energy to stay up all the rest of the night.

Mike and Bill are chattering excitedly over by the television to themselves as they get it started. The two of them eat that shit up, but the rest of them could take or leave the horror genre, really. Richie and Eddie typically prefer sci-fi and action movies while Ben and Stan tend toward fantasy. Bev could happily watch anything as long as the snacks are good. 

When Stan asks Bill what he has chosen for tonight and Bill reveals that it's one of M. Night Shyamalan's new releases, Richie is even less enthused.

“No, but I heard it was _b-brilliant_ ,” Bill says excitedly, and Stan hums distractedly, already checked out of the conversation. He goes to set up camp on the floor near the largest couch, and Richie turns to pay attention to his own seating arrangement. 

Him and Eddie usually share a spot already, moving steadily closer on whatever large armchair is available as the night goes on until hours later when they're both passed out pressed tightly together. But tonight Eddie hasn't started off on the other side of the seat at all. As soon as they'd all run in to claim their spots, Eddie had thrown himself onto the seat next to Richie, pressed right up against him and grabbing a blanket to drape over the two of them. He's grinning happily now at the room in general, watching their friends get everything ready and still clearly working off his excitement from earlier. 

That's something else that had shifted between them after that day down in the cavern when they were thirteen, changing their dynamic imperceptibly in ways that weren’t always immediately obvious. Since the day they met Eddie and Richie had always hung off of each other, always been the most touchy and physical of all their friends. And that fact hadn’t changed, except that now neither of them bothered to make excuses for it.

Before, if Eddie had been particularly sweet or complimentary to Richie, it was almost always followed by an insult or something thrown his way to mitigate the emotionality. Richie hadn't ever tried to stop himself from calling Eddie special nicknames or telling him how stinking cute he thought he was, but he was always sure to do it with his usual air of joking and farce, hiding - in plain sight, perhaps, but still hiding nonetheless. Their dynamic may have been built from day one on a foundation of mutual adoration, but they would never dare to outright say so, masking their feelings with shoves and banter in the way that young boys so often do to stay safe from questions and harm. 

Whatever it was that lay between them these days was more soft, unspoken. Almost un-thought of - it sometimes felt as if even the mental conceptualization of what this feeling was would somehow jinx it, would take it and render it void before it was even given the chance to find expression at all. 

The worst possibility of all, of course, was that this ‘feeling’ existed only for Richie. That for Eddie, it was nothing more than a closer bond with his best friend forged through a selfless rescue and shared trauma. But despite this there were times when Richie really thought that maybe - that somehow, _possibly_ Eddie could feel the same as him. But in the next moment it was as if he’d blink back into the real world and feel right back at square one all over again. There was simply no way to know, and the stakes would always be too high to risk asking. 

But enough of this. This was Eddie’s birthday. It was a happy fucking day. 

Richie thinks back to the kiss pressed to his cheek earlier and reconfirms that mentally. A happy fucking day.

Back in the present moment, it turns out that Bill has chosen a terrible movie. This is really no different from every other night when it's his turn to pick, but Richie has never felt in the minority about it before. He's also never chosen a movie for them that makes Richie feel truly sick to his stomach, so that's another thing to contend with.

He starts to feel really uneasy around the halfway mark of the movie. His arm is draped around Eddie’s shoulders now, and all of his concentration is being put towards not tightening it noticeably enough that he asks him about it. The high of earlier is starting to wear off quickly now for both of them, but as Eddie winds down he starts to relax, sinking further into Richie's arms, where Richie only gets tenser, no longer able to hold onto the image of Eddie's happy, beaming face of earlier well enough to distract him from the plot. 

It's some sort of cosmic joke. Eddie is lounging there, content and relaxed under Richie’s arm, _intentionally_ for once, and Richie can’t even appreciate it. Instead, he's just trying to concentrate on evening out his breaths to avoid puking as the plot drives on. 

_I see people,_ Cole says onscreen. _I see dead people. Some of them... scare me._

 _In your dreams?_ Dr. Crowe asks him.

Cole shakes his head no.

... _When you’re awake?_

Cole nods yes. 

Richie starts to shift nervously in the armchair. It’s - who the fuck wrote this? It’s all too close to home, but he can’t just _leave_ or else everybody would want to know why, and how is he supposed to explain that? Not to mention that for all intents and purposes, it’s Eddie’s birthday and he wouldn't be able to anyway - they're all meant to sleep over here tonight, and his parents have gone out to Portland on a date, so the house is all locked up and he never remembers to bring his key anywhere, anyhow. 

Malcolm Crowe stands on the sidewalk curb that night, lost in thought as the sidewalk steam rises from the vents. He brings his tape recorder up to record his observations.

 _His pathology is more severe than initially assessed,_ he recites, expression troubled. _He’s suffering from visual hallucinations, paranoia - symptoms of some kind of school-age Schizophrenia._ A beat. _Medication and hospitalization may be required._

“I’ll s-say,” Bill mutters, and Richie wants to vomit. _Medication and hospitalization may be required,_ Doctor Crowe says. _Eddie darling, you need to go to the hospital to get checked, I know how late you and that Tozier boy were out last night_ , Sonia Kaspbrak says. _Hey fairy-boy_ , the memory of Hockstetter says, _you know they make meds for that now, right?_ Maggie’s face, deep frown cutting through her features after that doctor’s appointment, _Is that a medicine mommy? Am I sick?_

It’s almost the end of the movie. Malcolm Crowe looks down at his chest and remembers what Cole had told him about the dead only ever seeing what they want to see. He perceives for the first time the bullet wounds riddling his chest and - that big, famous twist - realizes that it is he himself that has been dead the entire time. When he looks up at his wife, his face is marred by a terrible sadness.

 _Don’t cry,_ he tells her. _But I think I have to go._

“Holy shit.” Bill breathes. Him and Mike are glued to the screen, their faces rapt with attention. The rest of them look suitably impressed by the twist, if not as wholly taken by it as the other two are. It’s very clearly only Richie who hears a rushing in his ears, a sick roiling feeling in his stomach. Eddie looks somewhat discomfited, but not like - _imminent vomit_ discomfited, so Richie would really have no excuse for his reaction.

He's just hoping they'll get over their discussion soon enough, and switch it over to a different film. Or just let them all go to sleep and try to forget this terrible fucking movie already. Maybe Eddie can take his car out for a spin tomorrow, bring Richie along, and he'll be able to forget how easily his friends agreed that seeing the dead was some freakish ability worthy of being medicated. 

He doesn't blame them, not really. That doesn't make hearing it any easier.

And no such luck - he should have known that the movie would inspire an _endless goddamn discussion._

“That would be so f-fucking cool!” Bill is still exclaiming, turning to Mike with a shine in his eyes at the very concept, flailing hands gesturing toward the blue screen that lights up the living room at the end of the tape. Mike nods enthusiastically, and Richie can’t explain it, but now instead of a vague discomfort, it's an almost unbearable anger that he can feel burning through his chest. What the fuck do they know about it?

“Right?” Mike says, already pulling out the notebook him and Bill keep around for when inspiration strikes them for some new story or plotline that they want to get written down. 

“Sure would’ve been helpful three years ago.” Bev laughs, slapping a piece of licorice in her mouth and grinning over at them. The others hum their agreement, but it's the straw that breaks the camel's back and Richie can’t be here anymore. 

“No it _wouldn’t_ ,” Richie snaps at them, jumping up with his fingers clenched into fists at his sides and entire body shaking with the upset that’s flooded his chest. “What the fuck's the matter with you guys? It would be fucking scary and - and terrible, you know. It wouldn’t be fun or cool or anything like that at all. And why should he be medicated, huh? It’s not his fault he’s like that, he didn’t _ask_ to be able to see them!”

His friends stare at him in shock, falling silent at his outburst.

His system is still flooding with adrenaline, but Richie realizes with a sinking feeling in his chest how fucking inexplicable and weird his behaviour must look to them out of context. And what he fuck is he supposed to say to them now?

What a fucking mess. 

It’s not the confusion of his friends that finally makes him realize he needs to leave. It’s not even the sight of Eddie, now curled up all alone on that giant loveseat, worried and upset. What hits him in the chest and coils up like hot guilt is the look on Stan’s face, because it’s frustration and guilt that overtakes those features.

Well fucking done, Trashmouth, Richie thinks to himself. Not only have you ruined Eddie's birthday, but there are only two things in this world that get that deeply to Stan, and you’ve managed to kill both birds with one stupid fucking stone. 

It’s hard to tell which aspect of it is the worse offence. The fact that Richie’s outburst makes no sense, objectively, and Stan can’t handle when sense isn’t able to be made of a situation, when the pieces don’t slot neatly into place to present to him the whole picture. Or the fact that whatever it is that catalyzed this outburst is clearly hurting Richie, and there’s nothing he can do to fix it without having all the facts. And those are answers that Richie can’t give to him. 

It’s a stalemate. And that’s another thing that Stanley hates. Losing at chess. 

“Rich?” Eddie says quietly from where he sits on the loveseat behind him, hands reaching forward to tug at the ends of his button-up. Richie whirls to face him, and then back to his other friends, then back at Eddie like some kind of boomerang or ping-pong ball.

“I can’t - I don’t -” he says, already regretting having said anything at all. He could have just let it be. Eddie’s eyes are wide and worried, and the rest of them are staring at him in varying degrees of shock and confusion, and there’s nothing he can say to a single one of them. “Sorry, I - I have to go.”

He turns around, stumbling over toward the stairs and throwing himself down them to their pile of shoes. He slips his on easy-peasy, but his hands are shaking too hard to get his jacket buttoned up, so he throws it back onto the coat hook, grabbing the door handle and flinging it open.

“ _Richie!”_ Eddie says, at the top of the stairs now, “Where are you going? Nobody’s even at your house right now!”

Cool, Richie thinks. I’m not going there.

And with one last look at Eddie’s stricken face, he turns around, slipping out the door like a ghost.

\----

Richie loves the Hanlon farm. 

Not for the same reason everybody else loves the farm. To Mike, it’s home. Eddie loves to show up here sometimes, get his hands dirty, help out with chores and during lambing season just to prove to his mom that he can. Bill’s big on the peace and quiet it gives him to write, sitting out on the porch while Mike works, and for Stan it’s obviously a great location to birdwatch. 

But for Richie, the peace comes not from the quiet, but the noise. 

There are no Voices to worry about at the Hanlon farm. Or no human ones, anyway. All that can be heard in those fields, for miles and miles, is the sound of farm animals, both past and present. It had been almost impossible to tell at first, but Leroy doesn't keep horses these days, and there's no other explanation for the whinnying sounds that echo through the fields. 

He's come here now in search of that peace. Because he could feel himself spiralling before he had even left Ben's house, and he's hoping that the sounds of the farm will act like an immediate sedative for him, will give him a moment to breathe and think.

The same thoughts keep pounding through his brain, echoing in time with his pounding footsteps on the streets and eventually through the trees. What if - what if he's dead? What if they all are? What if none of this is real and - and -

None of it makes any sense, of course, and calm Richie might be able to recognize that. But panicked Richie can’t stop thinking about how throughout the entire movie they all talked to Malcolm like he was really there, how Malcolm didn’t even know himself that he was gone before it was too late. How all Cole's ability to see the dead had given them in the end was a grieving widow and the resigned acceptance of a dead man. 

He's reached the barn now, and as soon as he gets inside, Richie is already bending over the door of one of the horse stalls, body heaving with sobs.

“Stupid,” he mutters, hitting himself repeatedly in the forehead with the heel of his hand. “What’d do that for you moron, all you had to do was act fucking _normal_."

All he gets in response is the soft braying a horse and the distant sounds of late sheep under the ground. He shudders out breaths for awhile, trying to even out his breaths. 

“That you, Richard?” a voice behind Richie says, and he whirls around in startlement, nearly knocking himself over with the force of the spin. Leroy Hanlon reaches out a calloused hand to steady him, looking over him worriedly. Richie's chest is still heaving with laboured breaths, and he doesn’t say anything to explain, just swipes angrily at his eyes with the sleeves of his shirt. 

“Well how about that. Usually it’s the little Kaspbrak boy running over here all upset.” Leroy says, mouth quirked in a humorous smile.

There’s a brass hook fixed to one of the posts that lies between the two sides of pens running along the barn. A rag-tag collection of jackets and sweatshirts hang there, heavy and warm-looking, worn out from years of use but untouched by the dirt floor beneath them. Leroy reaches a hand out to it now, snagging off one of his own woollen red flannels, lined with warm sherpa fleece all along the inside. When he drapes it over Richie’s shoulders and guides him into getting his arms through the holes properly, this by itself goes a long way toward calming his heart rate down and he begins to feel a bit chagrined. 

“Sorry for coming in here without asking, sir.” Richie says, sniffing, and wipes a hand across his eyes. Leroy makes a dismissive sound in his throat, waving off the apology before Richie can even finish it.

“None of that now,” he says steadily. “You’re Mike’s friend. You’re welcome here any time you need it.” 

He waits for Richie to nod before giving one back, and speaking again. 

“Come sit out on the porch with me, son.” Leroy says kindly, gripping Richie by the shoulder and guiding him past the bleating of the sheep and towards the barn doors. “It’s a hell of a night to be spending alone in a cold barn.”

The walk back to the house isn’t too long at all, a couple of minutes at most and filled with the sounds of farm animals past and present rather than the usual whispering voices that crawl along the streets of town and keep him company when he's out at night. 

When they get to the stairs of the house, Leroy directs Richie to the porch swing, setting him up there before heading inside to grab them both some drinks. He hands a glass over to Richie before grabbing a chair to move it beside him, lighting a cigarette and leaning back in the chair, staring out into the field with a serene look on his face. The animals aren't the only sounds out there tonight: it's a veritable concert, with the chirping of the crickets and the hooting of the owls, the wind whistling through the crops a calming background noise that fades to the back of Richie's mind. 

And he tries to be quiet in return. Tries to sit there and catch his breath, but he's still feeling jittery and and his leg can't quite get with the program, bouncing up and down. Leroy might have been able to ignore it but for the rhythmic creaking of the springs and obvious sniffling sounds coming from the swing. To his credit, he gives Richie a couple of minutes to calm himself before blowing out a ring of smoke and looking over at him. 

"You want to tell me what's wrong, Richard?" Leroy asks calmly. "A burden shared is a burden halved. That's what I've heard, anyway." 

Richie lets out a derisive snort, drawing his knees up and placing his chin on them, swiping the back of his hand roughly across his eyes. 

“You’d think I’m crazy,” Richie answers hollowly, “If I told you. Just like everybody else in this town would. If they don't already."

Leroy stares hard at Richie for a long moment, rolling the cigarette between his lips while he considers how he plans to answer that. Eventually he lets out a sigh, placing the carton onto the table between them, and pushing it over toward Richie. Richie takes one and lights it up while he waits for Leroy to speak. 

"Thought it was the Kaspbrak boy's birthday," he says, "That's where Mike is at right now, yeah?"

Richie sighs, the guilt from earlier that already hadn't completely dissipated burning up again. "Yeah," he says, "Yeah, it's Eddie's birthday. And Mike's over there now."

And that confirmation makes Leroy look more sharply over at him, brow furrowing as he studies his face in the warm lamplight. It's clear that he wants to ask Richie why he isn't over there now, celebrating with Eddie along with everybody else. Richie doesn't blame him. It's more alarming than finding him crying alone in a barn. Of all the times to run out on a party, nobody would have guessed it'd be Eddie's birthday that he allows himself to compromise. But he doesn't question this either, rolling his cigarette between his fingers and staring out again at the fields. 

“Three years ago,” he says eventually, “Something was happening here in town. Something that has happened before, in my lifetime, and something that I imagine will happen again before I'm gone. And it was at that same time that Mike started to ask me questions about the history of this town. About what I believe. About all the things that I've seen. And I told him. I told him that this town is cursed, that something dark feeds on the people here, even if I don't know what it is. And something happened to you all that summer. My grandson and all six of his little friends.”

Richie chokes on a thoughtless inhale of his smoke, staring over at Leroy in shocked trepidation. The man looks back at him with a dry smirk, arching one eyebrow and letting out a laugh.

“You think I don’t notice when my grandson comes home after long hours, shaking and scared, covered in muck and grime with a bolt pistol strapped to him that he’s never wanted to carry around before?”

Richie doesn’t answer, turning back away to face the forest. Even if he did want to tell Leroy - which he doesn’t necessarily - that should only be Mike's decision in the end. It's not his place to decide, no matter how upset he may be.

“I didn’t ask any questions then,” Leroy continues evenly, “and I still won’t. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t believe what I heard if Mike ever needed to tell me.” He blows out a ring of smoke and looks square back at Richie. “You get my point son?”

The words hit Richie like a pound of bricks. He weighs his options for a few minutes, rubbing the sleeve of his borrowed jacket between his thumbs while he chews his lips. It’s not something he would normally even consider; not something he ever has, telling somebody. But. _But_. This secret, of all the ones he’s held and still holds - though not the worst by far, still not the scariest of them all - has started to feel too heavy to carry. And if Leroy is being truthful with him, this could be a safe place to let it down. To take the weight off his own back for one night before lifting it up again, starting anew in the morning. 

So he does. He tells Leroy Hanlon everything, starting from the stories his parents have told him about his mannerisms as a baby, all down through the years of his life until now. He leaves out any mention of Pennywise, any reference to the events that he caused during that summer. It's an absence that Leroy notes, but he still tells him about Georgie, about the terrible guilt and impossible choices presented to him when he heard his little voice for the first time that night. And then he tells him about what happened tonight, how that movie plot had felt like a mirror shoved into his face and how he was forced to watch all of the heartache and trauma he can cause to those around him unfold in front of his eyes on screen. How his friends didn't mean to, but their easy agreement about the medications and the treatment had felt like a knife stabbed into his own back.

He doesn't tell him anything about any other reason that such comments could cut him to the quick. Some secrets are too precious, even for this moment. He'd sooner tell him about Pennywise.

By the time he's finished, he's shaking like a leaf. This is the moment where he waits for Leroy's judgement to rain down on him, and for him to be told all of the truths that he already suspects, every last recrimination he's been waiting to hear if anybody else ever found this out about him.

But that's not what he gets. 

“I don’t believe you’re crazy, son.” Leroy says after a moment, heavy gaze fixed on Richie’s shaking form. He gives that comment a moment to sink in before continuing. “And I believe you. You hear me? I can't do nothing about it either way, but I believe what you say. And I want you to listen to me carefully, even if you don't think you need to hear this.”

He levels a stern look at Richie, who gives him a nod in return to let him know he should continue.

”There’s going to be a hell of a lot of people in this life who try to tell you who and what you are. That think they know and have the right to do it. But the thing that matters most is what you tell yourself about who you are. You ain’t getting nowhere listening to the hogwash coming out of the mouths of the people in this town, I’ll tell you that much. But when you can get up and stand tall, knowing for yourself who you are and not heeding the opinions of anybody else - that’s when you’ll truly be free. You hear me?”

“Yeah,” Richie says, arms wrapped around his toothpick legs and chin balanced on his knees. “I’m - I’m not there yet. But... thank you.”

Leroy nods decisively, leaning sideways to light another cigarette and the silence that falls between them is a comfortable one. It’s succeeded in bringing Richie down from his panicked state, so he finally feels up to cracking a joke. 

“I can see why Mike’s so well-adjusted now.” he adds, and Leroy Hanlon laughs and laughs, a comfortingly raspy sound, reaching forward to knock their glasses together. 

\----

By the time Monday rolls around, Richie is pretty committed to acting like nothing at all went down that Saturday. The rest of them follow suit. Stan brings him some homemade rugelach from home, and Eddie speaks to him with a more gentle cadence in his tone than he usually would. Mike doesn’t say anything at all about coming home to find Richie curled up asleep on the swing of his front porch, blanket draped over him, and nobody says anything at all about the scene at Bill’s house.

It’s just as well. What could possibly be said?

But - here’s a weird thing that happens. Two weeks after the sleepover, Eddie pulls him aside when everybody else is starting to climb out of the clubhouse, chattering away and paying them no attention, and he hands him what is clearly a thoughtfully-wrapped package. 

Inside it are noise-cancelling headphones, like the type that aviators wear in all of those war movies. It must have cost him an arm and a fucking leg, but Eddie doesn’t even bother to make excuses. He just looks at him right in his eyes and - this is strangest of all - tells him that it's no big deal. It’s just for if he ever needs some peace and quiet.

  
  



	6. 1994

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You wanted to prove there was one safe place, just one safe place where you could love him. You have not found that place yet. You have not made that place yet. You are here. You are here. You’re still right here._
> 
> Richard Siken, You Are Jeff

“ - and I _told_ you, didn’t I tell you that there would be fucking ladybugs everywhere? Jesus, Mike, you know I read that they can give you fucking - uh, laboulbeniales fungal disease! That’s what it’s called, and it’s - that’s a fucking STD Mike!”

Richie blinks into the afternoon sunlight, blearily pulling his eyes open as the voices of Mike and Eddie start to get closer to where he lies on the damp grass of the Barrens. He must have fallen asleep waiting for them at some point, because he’s been here for hours already, just shooting the shit and catching up a bit with Viktor. There’s not much to do these days with how empty Derry’s been getting, but at least by now he’s got a grasp of enough basic Russian to shock anybody who hears him, and it never gets old to see the look on their faces when he does.

One old lady had shrieked at him in the Aladdin the other day, called him a dirty goddamn pinko when she heard him mouthing off to Eddie in Viktor’s native tongue, and Richie had almost pissed himself laughing, hollered back _but better red than dead lady!._ Eddie, of course, had turned a bright red and muttered something about how that’s the last thing his mother needs to hear around town, but he’d been doing a terrible job keeping his laughter in all the same, and Richie knew the complaints were more for show than anything. 

Richie stretches his arms about above his head, yawning, and thinks about whether it’s worth it to sit up and greet them, or else just keep lying here where they’d soon join him anyway.

Eddie had gone over to the Hanlons' early this morning to help out with Mike’s farm chores, a task that Richie had gracefully bowed out of knowing there’s no way he’d be up at 5am, even if he had wanted to. Instead he’d volunteered to bring a lunch for them afterwards, meeting at their usual spot in the Barrens once they were all finished up. So - hey, he brought snacks! He brought drinks! He’s set up a whole goddamn picnic for them over here, and even if it’s not farmwork, it’s honest work all the same!

Mike laughs back, a deep kind sound, not at Eddie but at the general concept he’s over there espousing. It’s hard not to sometimes, and they’ve all learned to straddle the thin line between vocalizing their amusement at Eddie’s outlandish medical beliefs, and not trivializing the often traumatic reasons behind why he still sometimes holds them. Mike is particularly good at it, his infinite patience. 

The both of them still aren’t visible, somewhere a little bit behind the trees encircling the clearing, but shouldn’t be more than 30 seconds away.

“You can’t actually get diseases from ladybugs,” Mike tells Eddie patiently, “And they’re good for the crops, you know. They lay their eggs in aphid colonies, and when they hatch the larvae start feeding right away so that the plants are protected.”

“Well I don’t - I don't like them on me anyway! Is that so fucking bad, that I don’t want some gross beetles crawling all over my arms, no matter how good they are at fertilizing your goddamn tomatoes -”

Richie grins, pushing himself up as he starts to hum under his breath. By the time Eddie and Mike make it into the clearing, Richie is belting it at the top of his lungs, jumping forward to sweep Eddie up his arms, pantomiming a waltz amidst his surprised shrieks and Mike’s laughter.

“Lucky ladybug, lucky ladybug,” Richie croons, fingers wrapped tight around Eddie’s wrists and manfully keeping up the dance despite the latter’s attempts to stomp at his feet to put a stop to it. “Ladybug, silver dollar, rabbit’s foot, with a four leaf clover and a horseshoe! Wishbone, shamrocks got me shook, - _cha cha cha_ \- singin’ Abracadabra in a cat’s eye!”

“Richie, _stop,_ ” Eddie shrieks, but only just manages to get the words out through his own laughter. Mike has started to clap along to the beat behind them, his face turning into a blur as Richie whirls them around the clearing. 

“I wonder, wonder if you love me, guess I’ll ask the stars above me when the moon is bright canary yellow,” Richie ignores him, dropping Eddie down into an exaggerated dip. “It’d really be amazing if that crystal ball I gaze in says I’ll always be your steady fellow!”

Richie finishes with a flourish of one arm, the other held tight around Eddie’s waist. When Mike starts to clap for them, he offers him a hand, waggling his eyebrows in offer. Mike just waves him off with a laugh, pushing away from the tree he was just leaning up against to lie on the blanket Richie spread out for them earlier and crack open a soda.

“Enough,” Eddie begs, now pushing away from him with a laugh, trying to catch his breath. “Jesus, I don’t know how Bev did it, letting you coerce her into those dance routines so often.”

He’s said it without thinking, but the effect is almost instantaneous. The previously joyful mood of the gathering vanishes in an instant and the three of them sink into a heavy silence, thinking of Beverly, and how Richie and her had used to get up and dance to anything and everything when the seven of them hung out to the cheers and laughter of their friends. How they haven't heard from her in months now, just the same as they haven’t heard from Ben, from Bill, from Stan.

But the bone-deep fear and disappointment of that particular mystery occupies enough of their days already, and so they only allow it a second here before they’re shaking themselves out of it and turning back to the issue at hand. 

A small bit of the heaviness always remains, though, nowadays, impossible to shake off entirely. 

“So how was the farmwork today, boys?” Richie asks in a high, breathy Southern twang. “I got some nice cold drinks all laid up for you here, and some sustenance besides, to cool yourselves off and put those sore muscles to rest.”

Mike rolls his eyes, but chucks a soda over to Eddie who catches it deftly in his hands and plops down on the blanket himself, seating himself with a groan at the pressure on his sore muscles. Richie gives him an exaggeratedly sympathetic look, to which Eddie scowls and tosses a handful of grass and dandelions at him. He’s already a bit punchy from having been forced to accompany his mom to the hospital the other day for the first time in forever, to get her some new mysterious round of testing done, and he and Mike have been working slowly to crack that crusty shell ever since. 

But still. Rude. 

Richie starts to slap together a sandwich for himself, still whistling Billy and Lillie under his breath. When he takes his first big bite of it, he’s interrupted immediately by Mike snorting to his right. 

“Thought you had food ready for _us_ and our big, strong, man muscles,” he says dryly, “How come you’re not making me a sandwich here? Have you been doing something more strenuous than farm chores today?”

“Why, mourning over lost time with you of course, my darling.” Richie tells him, crawling over to pluck a buttercup and present it lovingly to him. “It just about _exhausts_ me some days, the solitude. The loneliness. I stare out my window all day, trying to keep busy but wondering when my husband will return home from the farm.”

“My condolences.” says Mike dryly, tugging the basket over to start making some food for himself. He finds the Baby Ruth that Richie had thrown in there for him earlier though, and as he shakes it at him with a grin Richie figures he’s forgiven his dereliction of duty. 

“What, you haven’t been exhausted from missing _me_?” Eddie demands, scowling at the picnic basket himself as he starts to slam together his own sandwich, and shooting daggers at the special chocolate bar that Mike discovered stashed away for him. 

Richie grins at the spectacle, sharing an amused look with Mike. The random bouts of possessiveness that pop up in Eddie are seldom and endearing, rare as it is that somebody else is able to occupy Richie’s full attention for any significant length of time. 

Richie lets him stew in it for a bit longer before pulling a Milky Way out of his pocket and passing it over to Eddie, who blushes at the realization but takes it with a mumbled thank you.

“My, my, that’s two handsome young men vying for my attention!” Richie drawls anyway, hand to his heart as the flustered southern belle. “But I’m a good Christian girl, you know. You’ll both just have to ask my daddy for his blessing before I accept _either_ one of you.”

Mike lets out a hum as he considers this new information, but Eddie is already celebrating his win.

“Oh, well I’ve got that on lock then,” Eddie says, pleased. “Went already loves me.”

“That may just be because you’re a convenient alternate son,” Richie points out with a mouthful of sandwich. “He gets me for all the jokes and everyday life, and then he gets you to learn all that manly shit like changing car tires and fixing up furniture that I can’t be bothered with. Best of both worlds.”

“Also rude to imply to Went doesn’t already love _me_.” Mike says, crossing his arms and fixing Eddie with an offended glare. “What are you trying to say, huh?”

“I’m not saying they don’t love _you,_ just that I’ve known them longer!” Eddie argues, arms gesticulating passionately as Richie sits back to watch how it all pans out. “So even if they do love us equally, I automatically win. By precedence.”

Mike concedes this point with a shrug, but Richie leans over to give his shoulder a bump, driven by an unshakable loyalty to his first-fake-husband. “It’s okay, Mikey. I like your grandfather way better than Eddie’s dad, so you’ll always have that win in your pocket.”

This has Eddie’s head ping-ponging back to look at him. 

“You’ve haven’t talked to my dad since you were six, dumbass.” Eddie points out with a challenging stare, holding direct eye contact. “Unfair comparison.”

To his credit, Richie only hesitates for a brief second before shooting back with, “I’ve never talked to Mike’s grandmother either, but I _guarantee_ you I already like her better than your mother, Eddie my love.”

Eddie gives him that one, hackles lowering as he rips open his Milky Way bar, more concerned with stuffing his face than continuing on with the debate. 

“I’ll take that, Rich.” Mike tells him solemnly, “Consider this me throwing in the towel. Hard as it will be to lose your heart, it’s a sacrifice I’ll learn to live with. And what a worthy opponent.”

Eddie points at Mike smugly in acknowledgment, chewing happily as they let a peaceful silence settle over them. Nice as it is to poke at each other, it can be even nicer to relax like this, in each other’s company and safe in the knowledge that they’re together, nobody left out and nobody unaccounted for. 

They stay there for a couple of hours, doing nothing more than lazing about and enjoying each other’s company. The days left to do this are getting fewer and fewer with the waning down of summer, and with that a tinge of desperation has wormed its way into their gatherings.

“So when are the two of you headed out?” Mike finally asks, sitting back on his hands and grinning over at the pair of them. The sun is hot and they’re all but baking here in the late afternoon sun. Mike has already braided together enough flower jewelry to adorn them all top to bottom, and the hoots and hollers Richie had gotten as he’d given them both a fashion show showing them off was enough to make him feel accomplished for one day. 

“Second last week of August,” Richie responds, shielding his eyes against the sun and flopping down next to where Eddie sits with his legs stretched out in front of him, propping the back of his head up on one of them. “Right, Eds?”

“Yup,” Eddie confirms, sprinkling grass onto his face and laughing as Richie splutters and threatens to bite at his fingers. “If you’re even _packed_ by then, that is. I’ve seen your room and I’m not actually convinced we’re going to make it in time.”

Mike laughs at them, genuine happiness shining through despite the exhaustion that still lines his face. 

He’s been putting in more hours at the farm lately, and any opportunity to relax is good for him, which is why the two of them have been trying to drag him out more often that usual; or, failing that, taking up some of the work themselves. Richie may not get up at 5am for mucking stables, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t done his best to help in other ways. Doing the rounds to feed and water the animals while Mike is out making a delivery, pulling out weeds that line the crops and creep into the garden. Leroy hasn’t said a word about it, but he’s given both him and Eddie a respectful nod from his spot on the porch whenever they show up.

There’s a tiredness behind his gaze these days that Richie doesn’t like the look of, and Eddie has been fretting up a storm worrying about the dark bags that seem to be permanently present under his eyes. 

“You have yours too, though, right Mikey?” Richie asks, turning his head to the side where his cheek rests on Eddie’s shin so that he can look at his other friend. “Don’t think that we’d leave without making sure that you’re okay too.”

“University of Florida,” Mike confirms with a small smile, “I’ll be headed out a couple of weeks after the two of you leave. Need to finish some things up at the farm first, you know.”

A small flock of birds flies out the tree above his head and Richie banishes any thought of Stan before they can properly materialize. Instead he peels off his button up, wriggling his back against the ground like a worm, and presenting his biceps to Mike with a waggle of his eyebrows.

“Well if you need any help, you know where to look, my friend,” Richie says, “These guns are just lying here useless otherwise, and what a goddamn waste of masculinity that is.”

Eddie snorts, prompting an offended sniff from Richie, a pout that only deepens when Mike laughs so hard that he momentarily falls off balance and gets a faceful of dirt. 

“Oh, sure, laugh it up pal.” Richie complains, sniffing as Mike shakes himself off and crawls over to sit side to side with Eddie this time, looking out at the water of the Quarry with them. “Offer retracted.”

Mike leans over to smooch a big kiss on Richie’s cheek in apology and Richie pretends to swoon.

“Sorry, Rich,” Mike says. “Think the marriage can be saved?”

Richie pretends to think it over for a minute, studying his fingernails and tossing some curls over his shoulder. “Well… I suppose so. Can’t argue with lips like that, after all.”

They all collectively lose it. 

“But seriously, Mike,” Eddie says quietly when the three of them settle down, “You know we’d be happy to help whenever you need it. For anything. Right?”

Mike smiles softly over at Eddie, bumping their heads together and nodding his head. “Of course I do, Eds. But it’s not so bad, really. And soon I won’t have any farm work to do at all. I’ll probably miss it then.”

Eddie nods, satisfied with what he hears as a truthful answer, and here’s the thing. Richie doesn't know that he’s lying either, or he suspects that he might have done a lot of things differently in the weeks that followed.

  
  


\----

Richie had always thought privately to himself that the summer of 1989 would be the worst thing that could ever happen to the seven of them. Lifelong trauma for certain, but not an event that could possibly be eclipsed in scale by any other. Georgie’s death and disappearance, broken bones, killer clowns, enough fuel for nightmares that even now have never quite subsided. How is anything supposed to get worse than that?

In retrospect, this is a pretty embarrassingly naive belief. He really should know better by now. 

Just because so many good things are happening in his life right now, so many moments that he's been waiting his whole life for - that are so close to true realization he could almost reach out and _touch_ them - doesn’t mean that they can’t all be torn away from him in one single second. 

First and foremost on these list of good things: him and Eddie both have their acceptance letters to the University of California. They have the mail in their pockets saying that they will be roommates, and a rock-solid plan to be packed and get out of town before Sonia can even figure out where they’ve gone. Maggie and Went know that they’re both going, of course, but not anything about when or how, which is a deliberate oversight. They’re the ones that will have to stay in Derry and field questions if all goes to plan, after all. 

Which is how Richie and Eddie have been spending their remaining days, for the most part. Getting packed, planning out their goodbyes, and fretting over whether or not they have everything they need to be three thousand miles away from home. 

This last bit is Eddie’s purview, mostly - frankly Richie thinks that anything they forget can be happily sacrificed on the balance of leaving this shithole for good. 

There’s only one thing stopping them from the complete and incandescent happiness that they’d expected would envelope them when this day came, of course, and that’s that with the exception of Mike, all of their friends have already been gone for months and months, and not a single one of them have been heard from since. 

It was an eerie twist of fate. The four of them had gotten the news that their families were moving within weeks of each other, despite some of them having lived in Derry for decades, and had promptly dropped off the face of the town like flies: first Bill, then Bev, then Ben, and most recently, Stanley.

That one hurts in a deeper way than any of the others had, and Richie tries to do everything he can to distract himself, to not ever, ever think about it.

But action over discussion had always been preferred for the members of the Losers Club, and this time was no different despite the depletion in numbers. Mike and Richie talk it over between themselves sometimes, trying to puzzle out the inexplicable but gut-wrenching mystery in hushed and careful tones, most often at night when it’s just the two of them awake. 

The answer that they’ve been driven to time and again, the thing that they have most often concluded is a possibility that Richie desperately doesn’t want to be true, because if it is - the consequences are unthinkable. 

Eddie refuses to believe it at all. Richie had brought it up with him just the once, after five weeks had passed with no messages from Bill forthcoming, but he denied it outright. He says they must just be so relieved to be out of Derry that they haven’t thought to call, that they’ll meet back up with all of them just as soon as they finish up their last year here and make it out together like they’ve always talked about. 

Richie had almost pressed the matter right then and there, but there was something so dangerously fragile in Eddie’s eyes to be told that Bill had forgotten him that Richie never attempts to try again. It’s best kept between him and Mike for now, and they’re happy to keep it that way. To protect him for what little time they can. 

And Richie doesn’t even blame him. Not at all. He had refused to believe it himself until after Stan was gone, waiting three long months for a phone call that never came. Up until that point there had been a small, mean part of Richie that had held onto the secret hope that it was different for them. That even if Bill had somehow managed to forget Eddie, Stan could never do the same to him. 

But here they are. The joke is on him, because it wasn’t, and he hadn’t. 

After that it seemed clear that there was no other answer, and even if there was, it would have been more hurtful than the reality of the way things were anyway. 

\----

The moon hangs high in the sky, crescent and luminous as Richie heads over to Eddie’s that night. The two of them are staying over at Richie’s tonight, not Eddie’s, but he’s headed over to his place anyway to walk him. You can never be too careful in Derry, and that’s one thing at least that hasn’t changed since that summer - none of them have ever walked alone at night since, if it can be helped. And Richie has always made sure to walk Eddie. 

When he gets to the Kaspbrak yard, he climbs over the fence, whistling under his breath. He gives a quiet “Hi, Mr. Kaspbrak,” as he starts his climb up to Eddie’s window, and he’s not expecting anything more than the usual returned greeting, but more is what he gets all the same.

 _Hold on for a second, Richie,_ Frank says, and the unusual tone of his voice has a kernel of ice forming in Richie’s chest already. It’s the same one he had used warning him about Pennywise in 1989 and something in his heart warns that it’s more of the same coming now. _There’s something I wanted to talk to you about._

“Oh - uh, sure,” Richie agrees, pausing in his ascent and angling his body away from the direction of Eddie’s bedroom to keep their conversation inaudible as best he can. “What’s up?”

 _You understand, don’t you Richie, what’s been happening?_ Frank says to him, cutting right to the chase. _They’re all starting to forget, if they haven’t forgotten already. That’s what happens when you leave Derry, and it’s only the three of you left now._

Richie glances up at the window, guessing he has maybe two minutes at most before Eddie sticks his head out to demand what’s taking him so long. But then again, maybe not. As it is, he sits down heavily on one long branch, leaning against the trunk of the tree and closing his eyes in the cool hum of the night. Now seems to be the moment he’s been fearing all summer, the moment when everything finally breaks apart for good. 

“Explain that to me,” Richie says to him. “They... forget everything about their lives, that’s what you’re saying. But how? And why?” 

_It would be a disservice to call it forgetting,_ Frank says darkly, _When the process is more of a theft. The seven of you have been touched by the darkness that has bled for centuries into this town and the consequences of that are far-reaching. I believe the idea is that you will not be allowed to leave unpunished._

“Unpunished…” Richie repeats slowly. “But - I still don’t understand. By _who_? If we killed Pennywise back then, it doesn’t make any sense how or why this can all be happening again _now_. And even if we didn’t, that’s not - it’s not the right time frame.” 

The only sound for a long while is the wind rustling through the branches of the tree. Richie would usually be made antsy by the silence, but when he’s not sure whether or not he even wants the answers he’s asking for, it’s not difficult to sit there and trace mindless patterns into the bark, cherishing those last few seconds before the bomb drops.

Or it is, until it seems like Frank won’t be answering him at all, and what the absence implies is worse than a confirmation. It makes him angry - again, he has to sit here and play guessing games because nobody will tell him what’s going on.

“He already broke an arm, the first time around,” Richie says tightly, accusatorially, despite knowing logically that it’s not Frank’s fault. But he needs _somebody_ to be angry at, and Eddie’s father is as good an option as any as the one who, after all, could have mentioned something about all of this sooner than he had. While there was still time to do something about it that wouldn’t tear at his insides like weeding the Morning Glory that creeps through his fence at the end of summer. “And you’re telling me now that it didn’t even work. That Pennywise is still alive down there, somewhere, and that you’ve known that this whole time. And - and, what? The rest of us are supposed to just leave it at that, either stay in this shithole forever or let it steal our memories like it did everyone else?”

Frank stays quiet.

“Fucking answer me!” Richie demands, heart crawling it’s way up his throat. “Tell me, Is that what’s going to happen to me? To Eddie, when we leave?” 

That seems to do the trick. 

_Yes._ Frank eventually sighs, _Yes, that is what will happen. Unless and until the day that you all return home together again. It is only your complete unity that can break the spell, so to speak._

“In twenty-seven years, right?” Richie asks bitterly, catching on quicker than Frank had expected him to. “That’s what Ben said, back then when this all started. So all we have to do is wait almost three decades for the clown to get hungry before we’re allowed to be together again, is what you’re saying. Let it take our entire lives from us, as if we owe this town fucking anything.”

 _Not necessarily,_ Frank denies, his voice more urgent now as the sounds from Eddie’s window begin to get louder and more clear. _Richie, I told you last time that the rules are different for us down here. And I’m telling you as much as I can because I want you all to have the best possible chance at circumventing the worst of it. You’re a smart kid, Richie. You always have been. And I know that if anybody has a chance at turning things around, it’s you._

Even as he mentions it, there are already ideas percolating in his head, vague plans floating around his brain but not quite crystalizing yet. Frank is right that Richie won’t just let them all go without a fight, not now that he has all the information, but the fact remains that action needs to be taken, and quickly, if anything is to be done about it. 

The window opens above his head, louder than usual and providing an easy foreclosure to the conversation between Richie and his father. Good. Richie has nothing left to say to him. 

Eddie begins to climb down out of his window, and Richie allows the sharp pain of reality to dissipate for just a moment to fully embrace his fondness at the sight.

“Hey, Eds,” Richie calls softly, raising an eyebrow at the bag he can see that Eddie has slung over his shoulder and huffing out a quiet laugh. “What, are you moving in?”

Eddie scowls at this, slinging a leg over the windowsill to crawl over the branch toward Richie, and settling himself onto the branch next to him. He leans against his warm side and accepts the steadying arm that Richie drapes over his shoulder instead of going on his usual rant about situational preparedness and always being extra cautious. Small mercies. 

“Why didn’t you come in?” he asks softly instead, tucking a strand of hair behind Richie’s ear. “Usually you’re climbing in before I’m even ready to go. I was worried you forgot about me.”

Richie’s heart constricts. 

“Could never forget you, Eds.” Richie says. He tries to couch it in a joking tone, but the unavoidably serious lilt in his voice has Eddie flashing a sharp look over to him. 

But he doesn’t explain, doesn’t even try, gesturing instead to the ground so that they can both get a move on. It’s just as well that the walk home at night is always a necessarily quiet one. Richie needs the time to think. 

\----

The quiet that he gets is not the quiet he’d been expecting.

Eddie has been quiet since they got over to Richie’s house. He was quiet as they climbed the stairs to the door, he’s quiet as they both get changed, and he’s quiet as they slip into Richie’s bed. 

“What is it, Eddie-baby?” Richie finally asks softly, hand running through his wavy hair and nearly vibrating out of his skin with the force of his nerves. Just what he needs tonight - a new disaster. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s wrong.”

Things between them have changed leaps and bounds since they were sixteen, shy and unsure, sneaking glances out of the corners of their eyes and blushing to the roots of their hair if they accidentally caught the other’s eye. It still seems to be an unspoken truth that hangs in the air around them, but more sure now, more certain. Nothing can happen between them, not while they’re here, stuck in the hell that is Derry. But they straddle the line all too often these days, hinting at what they both know just enough that they’re on the same page, but not enough to put them in danger if a moment of carelessness were to hit at the wrong place or the wrong time.

“My mom,” Eddie says quietly, against the skin of his neck where they lie pressed together on Richie’s bed. “You know she made me go with her to the doctor the other day.”

Richie hums in acknowledgement, continuing to rub circles into his back.

“She - the doctor called today. They said it’s cancer. That she has… maybe two years, at the most.”

The whole world seems to freeze and Richie stills along with it, not knowing what to say. He feels worse than useless here. “I’m…Jesus, Eds, I’m sorry. That’s - fuck, that’s shitty.”

It feels so inadequate to say to someone for a dying parent, so wanting. But what else is he supposed to say, really? There’s not much more he can add. Sonia Kaspbrak has no love for him, and even if that weren’t already true, her abhorrent treatment of Eddie all these years has guaranteed that there’s no love lost on Richie’s end either. He can’t truthfully say that he’s sorry for her, or that he’ll feel any particular grief once she’s gone.

But she’s still Eddie’s mother. And Richie is sorry for anything that could be the cause of pain for him.

“And - and - that’s not all,” Eddie begins, voice rough as if he might start crying already, and Richie’s arms tighten around him, wondering what could possibly be fucking worse than that. He wheezes there in his arms for a minute while Richie tries to calm him down, but nothing seems to be helping. “Richie, I can’t, I don’t want to say it. I don’t want you to hate me. I could - I could stand anything in the world but that.”

“Wh - _Eddie,”_ Richie breathes, drawing him back by the shoulders so that he can look incredulously into his eyes. The pain that he sees swimming in them hits like a lance in his own chest, like Eddie’s pain is indistinguishable from his own. What the fuck is he talking about? “I could never. _Hey,_ look at me. I couldn’t ever hate you, what the fuck are you talking about? You’re the most important person to me. The most. You know that.”

Eddie only cries harder at this, squeezing his eyes shut and burrowing his face back into Richie's chest, arms squeezing his ribs tight enough that Richie almost feels like _he’s_ the one that needs to use an inhaler. 

“Richie, I can’t go to California,” Eddie says, all in a rush, flinging the words out like bullets as if the faster he says them the less true they’ll become. “I’m - her sister in New York said she has an apartment for us. If she only has two years left, then - then I need to take care of her. Even if she’s a terrible person, she’s still my mom and I have to look after her. And - and you know I have an acceptance from NYU too.”

He does, Richie thinks distantly, somewhere apart from himself. He had done it to appease his mother when she had first heard about California, and Richie hadn’t even bothered to apply himself given that it was all just supposed to be a cover. But he stays silent, and the absence of where his usual jokes would be only seems to make Eddie more frantic.

“But - but I looked into it!” he says quickly, “I can get all the credits I need during those two years and then I can easily transfer to California. Even if she’s - not gone by then, she can’t ask any more of me. I can give her two years, but I’m not giving up on our plans, I don’t want you to think I would do that. That I _could_ do that.”

Lying this close, with Eddie’s face not even a breath from his own, it’s easy to make out his summertime freckles, the dark tan that appears only once a year but suits him so well. California was going to be a dream; Eddie looking this bone-deep content twenty-four seven. A real boy of summer, and really could have been too, if Sonia had signed him up to join Little League with Bill when he had first begged her to as a child. 

It occurs to Richie that he’s looking at his summertime Eddie right now, but he hadn’t even spared a thought at the time to all of the other seasons’ Eddies, Eddies that he won’t get to see now. Eddies that he had taken for granted. That he may not ever see again, and it’s a terrible thing to grieve in advance, but Richie has hardly ever been able to do anything else. All of them, all those days, lived blissfully unaware and leaving him with fucking nothing. 

Rosy-cheeked and red-nosed Eddie of February, fingers stained with the frozen strawberries Maggie keeps stored up for the winter months. The curly-headed and grinning Eddie of May, lying down in the wildflowers at the Hanlons, safe in the knowledge that nothing here can hurt him the way he’s been told it will. September’s cooling air sending a shiver through his whole body, nothing that can’t be helped by Richie’s leaning over to tie his own scarf around Eddie’s neck.

He thought he’d have all of these Eddies in California. That he’d be there not only to stare at and ache for, but maybe even to touch. To dare to keep. 

What an idiot - who was he to think that could be his? 

Dorothy likes to quote the Bible at him sometimes, a well-rehearsed lecture when she thinks Richie’s acting particularly irreverent, even while she’s laughing at him and he knows she doesn’t mind, not really. He remembers bringing around a particularly sacrilegious author to read to her once, a selection that had her hooting even while she chastised his sheer cheek. 

The remembrance mocks him now, one of her distinct favourites playing stuck record.

 _When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child,_ she warns him, lying here in his bed with everything he’s ever wanted close enough to touch but never quite enough to keep, _I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things._

The lesson is clear: best to put him away now. Like an outgrown toy, like some old comic he’s read enough times that he doesn’t need to constantly look it over to be able to recite its pages. 

He still can recite its pages. 

If only it were that easy to remove Eddie from his veins. The boy is encoded in his DNA - it’s long since past the time that Richie could exorcise him, not that he’d ever want to. Even if he’s caught by Derry’s memory theft same as everybody else, something in his bones will always remember. Hell, he’d be surprised if he doesn’t break a bone somewhere down the line, clumsy as he is, and the doctor doesn’t look at the x-ray and raise his eyebrows all the way to ceiling, tell him _Well, we’ve never caught writing before, I’ll tell you that, but I see his name as clear as ink right across your collar._

Maybe an older Eddie will feel that same ache in his arm that he gets sometimes in the cold weather, that place where Richie had tried to set the break so unskillfully. He won’t know where he got it from at that point, of course, and he’d go in ask what that aching in his arm is, as far as he knows he doesn’t have a family history of early-onset arthritis? And the doctor will sit him down, look him right in the eyes and ask him _Don’t you remember when that boy broke his worry, his fear, his need to protect you right into your bones? When he cupped your face in his hands and knew it would kill you both, but at least you’d go out looking into the eyes of somebody who loves you? A warm compress should help, on the worst days._

If that could be what brings them back together in the end.

A rushing sound fills Richie’s ears and everything else Eddie is saying comes to him as if muffled underwater, and from a great distance too. The whole scenario as Eddie lays it out would have been doable. To the Richie of twelve hours ago, the idea would still have cut through like a knife, but it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. Richie could get a roommate until then, could figure out everything for them and have it all squared away and ready for when Eddie arrived. He’d even find a way to spin it into a livable reality for himself - the chance to prove that of all the tasks in the world, he takes Eddie’s comfort the most seriously. 

But only in a world where Frank Kaspbrak hadn’t just confirmed his worst fears. In a world where Richie didn’t know what was coming, and didn’t know that even two hours away from Derry would be enough to dissolve their memories of each other like sand.

So now there’s a new problem, and Richie needs to think it out sequentially, dispassionately, or else he thinks he’ll start screaming right here in this bed. 

Eddie doesn’t know about the Voices, and so Richie has no way to prove to him that what he knows about what has been happening to them is really true. And it’s not - that wouldn’t even be the worst of it, not really, because if it really came down to it, Richie knows that Eddie would believe him if he knew that Richie was serious enough about what he said. He may have denied the possibility to himself, too painful to consider even at the point where it wasn’t a threat to the two of them, but if Richie looked him in the eyes and asked him to trust that what he’s saying is the truth, Eddie wouldn’t deny him that. 

But what happens then? Eddie spends these next two years with Richie as planned, the both of them together, but not ever getting to spend those last moments with his only remaining parent, terrible as she was, and ending up resenting him for it? Hating him, for this last and most intangible theft? 

If there’s one thing that Richie knows, it’s that for everybody but him, time with the dead cannot be bought back. He’s heard that truth in so many Voices over the years, so many lost stories of guilt and regret, longing for even five more minutes with those they left behind. And with only him to hear them. 

Maybe it would be more fair to Eddie, to finally confess everything here and now. To lay out all of the facts and let him make his own decision about what to do going forward. 

But if he does that, Richie knows in his heart what choice Eddie will make. And yes, it will be what’s best for Richie. They’ll get to stay together, to hold each other so close it’s almost like they’re one person where all of the others have been torn away by forces outside their control. 

But that may not be what’s best for _Eddie_. And Richie feels sick at the thought that he’s just another person claiming to know better than Eddie what’s good for him, even only in the privacy of his own mind. But Eddie had _just_ told him how important it was to him to take that duty of care, and how can Richie be the one to take it away from him?

It’s - it’s a terrible thought, but Sonia _will_ die. Probably soon. And Eddie has everything he needs to take care of himself otherwise: a car of his own, enough money saved up for whatever school he chooses to go to, the bravery of a thousand, and a streak of independence so strong that nobody has ever been able to stamp it out, hard as they may have tried to time and again. 

So Richie knows what he has to do. He just has to be brave enough to do it.

 _If you love them, let them go,_ Richie thinks hysterically, _Even if they don’t know you are. Even if you never really had them in the first place._

So he draws in a deep breath, and uses every acting skill he’s ever developed in his lifetime, every last control to even out his voice, and tell Eddie: “Of course, Eds. Of course I understand. She’s - your mother. I don’t know why you thought that could ever make me hate you; what, because you’re a good fucking person to somebody who doesn’t even deserve it?”

That biting comment may have been a step too far. But - he’s losing everything that’s ever been important to him right here, grieving it’s loss privately and not being able to share or even vocalize the immense hurt. He thinks he’s allowed to abandon his best self for the moment. 

Eddie holds him tighter at this, tears now drying up on his face but still soaking into Richie’s shirt.

“Fuck, Rich, I’m so sorry,” he mumbles into his chest. “I’m sorry, I never wanted her to ruin your life like she’s tried to ruin mine. I’m sorry her bullshit has touched you too. It shouldn’t have to be your problem.”

Even Richie feels like pointing out that a cancer diagnosis goes a bit above somebody’s usual melodrama or ‘bullshit’, but he understands where Eddie is coming from.

“Stop it, Eds,” Richie forbids, thumb passing over the back of his head where his right hand is cupping it close to him. “Your problems _are_ my problems. I want them to be. If you didn’t want that, you shouldn’t’ve come at me like a feral beast at the age of six and made me so obsessed with you.”

The whole thing is more telling than Richie usually allows himself to be, but what the hell. If his time with Eddie is limited, then he wants to make sure it’s clear to everyone how much he means. How much he’s always meant. 

“My mother,” Eddie says quietly, “Has never been sorry a day in her life. I know that. She’s hurt me, and she’s lied to me, and she’s tried so hard to keep me from any good thing that could possibly appear to me, and maybe she thinks that she’s done it out of love, but I do know that she’s never once regretted it.”

Richie hums back to him, continuing to rub a palm in broad circles across his back, careful not to let his inner turmoil reflect in his face or movements. Giving Eddie the time he needs to say whatever he does.

“But _you_ are,” Eddie says thoughtfully, “You actually are. You say you’re sorry to me and you always mean it, even when it’s not your mess to be sorry for.”

Eddie is silent for a moment, before he turns over again, tugging Richie’s arm with him so that it winds up draped over his waist, nestled up with his back against Richie’s chest as he whispers, almost shamefully, “I know you’re sorry about my mom dying. But I don’t know what I am.”

Richie nods, letting that confession wash through him. If Eddie is looking for recrimination, he won’t find it here. 

Eddie’s breath evens out a couple of minutes after this confession, Richie singing the usual tune softly enough to put him to sleep, despite the headache he must have now from the held-in tears and sudden release. Once Richie is sure that he’s sleeping, he presses his face up against the back of his head, breathing in the scent of him and turning over what he now knows in his mind.

It’s a terrible thing to think, but what he's just been told simplifies one of the chief hang-ups that Richie has had about the entire situation. Letting Eddie go into the arms of a Sonia Kapsbrak who still had decades left in her would have been an unconscionable disservice. 

Richie wouldn’t even have been able to do it, even if it was the right thing by someone else’s standards. 

But a Sonia Kapbrak who only has two years left. That’s something he can live with.

Richie is suddenly fiercely glad for his car gift back when they were sixteen. If something goes wrong, if the timeline doesn't line up, or even if - god forbid - this is yet another one of Sonia’s lies, Eddie won’t have Richie to come get him this time. He’ll need his own way to escape, and even if the memory of Richie is gone, maybe the sight of the car will be enough to light a fire in him, remind him that someone somewhere always knew he’d be brave enough to leave.

There’s another option, of course. The two of them could stay in Derry together, not go anywhere at all, just as long as they’re allowed to keep their memories of each other. Richie would happily live here with Eddie for all of his life, would ignore the sneers and take his hits in silence without a complaint. Work three jobs to get them a shit little apartment, watch Eddie fix up a leak in the roof from their mattress on the floor, and never once regret the choices that brought them there. 

But Derry means Sonia Kaspbrak for the next few years, at the very least. Derry means the two of them always needing to hide, always looking over their shoulder. An Eddie who will never get any of the opportunities he deserves, never be able to reach his full potential, or forgetting potential entirely, any sort of chance at real happiness. 

Richie had always known that he would do anything for Eddie, even if he had to break his own heart to do it. And - he hasn’t ever forgotten the scenes he was shown stuck in the Deadlights. He hadn’t understood them at the time, but he’s starting to think again of all those different futures, all those sad, terrible faces, and he knows which one he has to try to facilitate. 

_If you love him Richie_ , Frank had said that day in the Deadlights, dirty and shaking down there in the sewers, _this is how._ He’s never been entirely sure what that had meant, but now he thinks he does. And that he can prove it.

\----

Maggie and Wentworth Tozier are one of those weird couples who have calendars stocked up in their house years in advance. Richie has always made fun of them for it, but he never will again now that they’re coming in handy for him the way he’s planning for them to. 

After seeing Eddie off the next morning and promising to head back over to his house again soon, maybe meet up with Mike at the Barrens later, Richie’s seated on the floor of his basement, hand hovering over a calendar bearing the year 1998. 

He’s just about to pull out a sharpie when he hesitates. He was thinking of himself when he chose that year, and how he feels, but that’s not fair to Eddie, is it. 

So even though just the small action alone makes his heart sink, he moves his hand over to the calendar bearing the year 2000. 

Six years should be enough, shouldn't it? Six years for Eddie to get away from his mother, six years to land on his feet and be in a safe enough place for Richie to justify returning to him all of the memories, good and bad. Six years to live a peaceful life free of any clown worries, six years to just breathe. If what Frank said is true, then Richie couldn’t return to him without also returning their memories of Derry, too. And all of it could only happen in their unspeakably horrific hometown, all of them together. 

Richie ignores the little voice in his head that’s imagining a twenty-four year old Eddie with a wedding band. A twenty-four year old Eddie who has had time to see the world, experience all the different people the world outside Derry has to offer, and has decided once all of his rightful memories are returned that maybe Richie wasn’t ever the greatest thing since sliced bread after all. 

Richie laughs at himself, an unkind sound. 

Get over yourself, Trashmouth. Time waits for no man. Pick up the sharpie and make your move.

—— 

Two weeks later Sonia Kaspbrak comes out of the house, glaring venomously at Richie as she starts to load more bags into the car. Any hopes that Richie had held for Eddie’s sake that this was just another one of her elaborate ruses is washed away by what he sees in front of him. Even to his own untrained eyes, she’s more drawn than he’s ever seen her, pale and sickly, though her eyes are still sharp and as mean as a snake’s.

But for once she doesn’t say anything to him as she passes by, no backhanded remark spat in his direction. Richie imagines that she’s probably just happy that in her mind she’s finally won and has Eddie for good, in her grips and far away from the unchivalrous wiles of Richie Tozier.

He’s so absorbed by the thought of it, the overwhelming bitterness and anger he feels for her, that he doesn’t even notice Eddie walking up to his side.

The two of them stand there together, watching Sonia attempt to fit yet another bag into the trunk, but saying nothing. Anything they had to say to each other has been said, now and then, last night and last week and for years past, in words, in action, in touch. 

“Eddie!” Sonia calls shrilly, having fit that last stubborn bag into the small niche she had left for it. “Come on, hurry up now. We don’t want to be late meeting your aunt. We should have been on the road two hours ago."

At this, she shoots a venomous stare at Richie as if the delay were his fault. When he doesn’t bite back, there is something in her eyes less smug than it is studying.

Or at least, that’s what Richie thinks, that nothing is to be said here, not now in this horribly public venue. But when he steps ruefully backwards at Sonia’s summons, prepared to hold his tongue and let his heart start the process of breaking quietly, not to bother Eddie with it, Eddie’s hand flashes out quickly to stop him before he gets even a full step away.

“Richie,” Eddie says quietly, one hand gripped tightly to the strap of his bag and one wrapped gently around Richie’s wrist where they both stand waiting beside Sonia’s car. “In California -”

He hesitates, not finishing his sentence, but looking almost pleadingly at Richie to understand what he’s trying to say here. 

His face is saying what Richie already knows. And his heart is fucking rending itself to pieces right here on the pavement. He wishes he could take it out right now and hand it to him - it would be less painful than allowing it to remain here in his chest where it is. 

Richie can’t kiss him here. Not in the daylight. Not where his mother could see; where any other Derry residents could see and go after him for it.

Richie reaches up the hand not already encased in Eddie’s fingers to cup his cheek, stroking a thumb softly across the soft skin of it. Eddie leans more heavily into his warm palm, one eye peeking open to stare longingly at Richie. Richie’s chest aches. Here in his hands is everything he’s ever wanted, looking at him and as good as telling him that he’s wanted right back, and it’s all just going to slip through his fingers like dust in the wind. 

Maybe Richie can be brave after all, just this one time. He will let himself have this, out here and in the open of Derry, knowing that Eddie and his mother both won’t be allowed to remember it for longer than it takes to pass through the town limits, not caring if he experiences the consequences of it here. He leans forward, closing his eyes and pressing a kiss to the centre of Eddie’s forehead. 

“Yeah, Eds,” Richie says softly anyway, lips still pressed against his skin and keeping an eye on Sonia where she waits impatiently for Eddie to get in the car, promising him the truth that lives in his heart rather than the one that he knows really awaits them after today. “In California.”

Richie lets go of his hand like carving out a piece of his soul and offering it to the highest bidder. 

When Eddie starts up the car and begins to drive away, Richie is sure to keep his face carefully schooled, waving a hand to him through the rearview mirrors until they’re finally out of sight and his arm feels as if it could just about fall off from how painful it is.

When that last visible pinprick of the car is finally swallowed by the trees is when he collapses onto the ground, right there in what used to be the Kaspbrak driveway and sobs, huge gasping tears, until he physically can’t anymore. Even then he just begins dry-heaving, dizzy and tired, and falls right to his side onto the grass of their front yard.

He sits there until night falls, ignoring the Voices, ignoring passersby who look at him strangely, ignoring his own thoughts, and that’s where Mike eventually finds him. He's the one who draws him up by strong, work-made arms, and walks him home. Who makes him eat something and sits with him until morning, not trying to break the silence with useless platitudes but not wanting to leave him alone all the same.

Richie thanks him for it, eventually. Even if he is preoccupied with his own bullshit, he knows that Mike is all he has left now, and it’s not fair to dump everything onto him with no acknowledgment or care for how good he is, always, how good he has always been to them. 

It’s not quite as silent as he may think, despite this. Abram doesn’t ask, doesn’t spare any energy toward trying to find the words to make it better. But he does sing to him that night, a low raspy frontier tune that has Richie aching not just for the pain it describes, but for how terribly loved he feels to deserve the care. 

It’s better than saying what has been running through his mind since he first saw Mike’s silhouette approaching from down the street which is, of course, _soon you won’t know me either, you know. Soon you won’t remember loving somebody enough to carry them home and sit with them until the sun rises again, soon I’ll be just one more stranger in the world to you._

He ends up being wrong about that, funnily enough. Years later, he’s still not sure whether knowing that at the time would have made the moment more or less painful, and for who. 

So when Richie leaves Derry himself at the age of eighteen, he already knows that it will be six years before he feels anything close to that same love again. He wonders less urgently whether it will be the same amount of time before he hears any bones whisper to him through the ground, though he does feel keenly the loss of his usual friends.

The last thing that stays with him isn’t Eddie’s eyes, and it isn’t Mike’s strong, comforting arms, neither of which he was allowed to keep for longer than it took to reach Bangor. 

But as he sits on that plane, staring out the window and feeling less than he ever thought he would on his way to a brand new life, it’s Abram’s low tone that plays on a loop in his head, keeping him company as his eyes track shapes in the clouds. 

> _I bid adieu to loved ones, to my home I bid farewell_
> 
> _And landed in Chicago, in the very depth of hell._
> 
> _It was there I took to drinking, I sinned both night and day,_
> 
> _And there within my bosom, a feeble voice would say:_
> 
> _”Then fare you well, my loved one, may God protect my boy,_
> 
> _And blessings ever with him throughout his manhood joy.”_
> 
> _I courted a fair young lad, his name I will not tell,_
> 
> _For I should ever disgrace him, since I am doomed for hell._
> 
> _It was on a beautiful evening, the stars were shining bright,_
> 
> _And with a fatal dagger, I bid his spirit flight._
> 
> _So justice overtook me, you all can plainly see,_
> 
> _My soul is doomed forever throughout eternity._
> 
> _It’s now I’m on the scaffold, my moments are not long;_
> 
> _You may forget the singer - but don’t forget the song._

Richie closes his eyes. 


	7. 2000 / California

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He was not dead yet, not exactly - parts of him were dead already, certainly other parts were still only waiting for something to happen, something grand._
> 
> Richard Siken, Road Music

Waiting tables isn't exactly the glamorous side job that Richie had been envisioning when he got picked up by a talent agency two years ago, discovered at volunteer stand-up night at his local dive bar.

But it turns out that comedy alone doesn't pay the bills until you get a TV show or something out of it, so here he still is every day, forty hours a week. Steve swears it won't be for much longer, that his big break is coming, but Richie thinks _fat fucking chance_ , personally.

Getting up at the crack of dawn for his morning shifts are as bad as the job ever gets, in his opinion, but even that part he doesn't mind all too much. Richie has always been the social type, outgoing and extroverted, always wanting to talk, talk talk, to be listened to, to carry on a conversation and to have it bring a smile to somebody's face. He thrives as a waiter for this very reason, where others get burnt out quickly from the same.

That, and since he's not yet been able to connect with anyone deeper than the occasional acquaintance since moving out to California, it gives him the outlet he needs on the weeks he doesn't have a show lined up. 

It's enough to try to convince himself that he's not lonely, anyways.

"Where can I turn when my fair-weather friends cop out?" Richie hums to himself now, tying an apron around his waist and patting down his pockets to figure out where he put his pencil before he went on his smoke break twenty minutes ago. "What's it all about? Can't find nothin' I can put my heart and soul into, sometimes I feel very saaaaad."

The woman washing the dishes at the back hums along with him, tapping some forks together to get in on the rhythm, and Richie grins at her, pointing a finger and dialling the performance up to a ten. Cue the buzzkill in three, two, -

"Tozier!" His manager shouts, sticking his head through the door that separates the dining room and kitchen, snapping his fingers and gesturing for him to get out there already. "Less singing, more table-waiting please. And get that fucking pencil out of your hair."

Ah, bingo. He pulls the pencil from his curls and slips past his manager, ducking under his arm to find his next table. When he skids to a stop in front of it, it's a friendly-looking boy he sees seated there, somewhere around his own age with brown eyes warm and shy. A perfect target for Richie, who welcomes the opportunity to break through somebody's shy exterior and get them to crack a smile. 

"Hellooo," Richie trills, grinning at the boy, who does a double-take but smiles back, a little startled by his exuberance. "I'm Richie, I'll be your waiter today. Can I get you anything to start with? A drink? A meal? A cake?"

The boy doesn't take the bait, biting his lip for a second, seriously trying to decide. "Um... just a water, I think. Thank you."

"Gotcha, gotcha," Richie says, scratching the order down on his notepad. "Playing it safe today huh? No milkshakes for you? No smoothie? This is California, man!"

The boy laughs, scratching the back of his head sheepishly. "I'm not from here, actually. Just visiting my aunt."

Richie hums back, placing a hand on his hip and fixing the boy with a studying look. "Well then, it's official. I'm not bringing you a glass of goddamn water for lunch on this beautiful sunny day of your first trip to California. This is the land of luxury, and I'm putting you down for a triple chocolate milkshake. Capiche?"

That at least gets him a pleased smile, and Richie cheers internally at his slow but sure success as the boy nods his acceptance. "Sounds good, yeah. And, uh - I'm Ben, by the way. If that matters."

The name strikes a chord somewhere in Richie's mind, throwing him weirdly a bit off-balance when he hears it, which is fucking bizarre. It's a common enough name. He must have met about sixty Bens in his lifetime, not being particularly struck one way or another by them. But he's not been feeling his best lately, and for whatever reason, hearing this is what brings his recent ongoing migraine back with a vengeance. 

"Ben," Richie repeats, listing a bit to the side so that his body is held up by where his hip rests against the table, and frowning down at the floor. "Like, uh... Benjamin? And... Hayst...hay..."

His head starts to pound, and he squeezes his eyes shut, dropping his notebook to the floor when he raises his hand to press against his forehead. There are flashes of light behind his closed eyes, and it takes him a second to realize that it's not from the restaurant, but from rapidly appearing pictures in his own mind. A head popping up from the ground, carrying another boy in his arms. A sweaty hand holding his own, adrenaline spiking high as three of them run away from the bright lights of a movie theatre at night. A primal scream let loose, uncharacteristic but beautiful, as heavy stones are launched from outstretched arms. 

"Hey, are you okay?" the boy's voice breaks through his painful haze, placing a hand on his arm. But Richie can't answer, and by the time he's able to open his eyes and stand the light, he's already been led outside by a coworker and being told to go home and get some rest before he gets them all sick. 

Looks like that's capitalism one, Richie's wallet zero. He trudges his way home in a daze, already forgetting what had caused the pain in the first place by the time he unlocks his door and throws himself miserably onto his mattress.

\----

Richie Tozier has been having strange dreams. 

This is in addition to the headaches, and it isn’t an unusual experience for him, really. Ever since he can remember he's been beset by them, strange and confusing scenes behind his sleeping eyes that have no discernible cause. He's grown accustomed to them for the most part, never really feeling like they were anything worth complaining about. After all, they never came too often to him, twice a month at the most, but enough in the end that he still had to scramble to find a single room at college when his roommates complained once too often about his nocturnal shouting fits.

So strange dreams are nothing new to him. But it would be a lie to say that they haven’t gotten noticeably worse over the last few weeks, as the lead up to the new year fast approaches. 

The dreams themselves are bad, threads of terror and loneliness running through every one, phantom pains and bloody palms. But the worst part of them isn’t how he shouts himself awake with a racing heart, and it isn’t the pounding headaches that come the morning after from another night of two hours sleep. It isn’t the strange people and places that he sees in his dreams, and it isn’t the first few seconds after waking in which he still feels suspended in a bright light, limbs and eyes paralyzed into place. It isn't the confusing, aching sense of nostalgia that overwhelms him as he sifts through them, searching for something that he can't figure out.

No, the hardest part of all is how much worse these difficult nights make an already existing problem for him. A problem that he’s tried to go to a doctor for, an issue that he’s combed through countless books looking for an answer to, something he's tried to consult countless experts on. One he has even tried to Google search the answer to, on his most desperate nights. Nothing that ever helps, nowhere that ever leads to any sort of answer for him.

Richie feels like he has a phantom limb, is the thing. 

That’s the best way he can think to describe it, although it’s more like he’s missing one of his five senses. Which is - he’s _not_. Obviously he’s not. So the feeling doesn’t make any sense on a good day, when he can distract himself from the sensation, much less the bad ones when distraction isn’t an option. Because on nights like this, when he sits up panting and dizzy in his bed, the absence feels more like a black hole than it does the usual vague loss he’s unable to pinpoint. 

Richie has a routine on nights like this. He’ll haul himself to the kitchen, make a nice hot cup of tea, and he’ll take the mug with him outside, toeing open his back door and plopping himself uncaringly onto the wet grass. He keeps his yard wild and largely untouched; something about those intensely manicured lawns get his hackles up like nails on a chalkboard. As he sits there, he presses his hands into the earth, his toes wiggling through the blades, and he’ll take a deep breath in, holding it for a while before repeating the process all over again.

After this comes the recitation. Sight. Smell. Hearing. Taste. Touch. Every one he can confirm that he possesses right now: the night is dark, but the cheap fairy lights he’s taped up illuminate the yard well enough for him to make out the little garden he’s started to cultivate. It’s late Autumn in the Bay Area, which means the sweet tang of redwoods, the riotous fragrance of wildflowers that pervades everywhere, and the herbal scent of fennel heads and the more mineral tarweeds. He can hear the distant clanking of traffic, never stilling even in this late-early hour. He prefers his tea strongly brewed, and overwhelmed with sweetening agents, honey and sugar, and the taste of it does a better job of calming his heart more than anything else. The wet grass is under his fingers and toes, sending a brief shiver through his frame. Sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch. All accounted for.

That’s usually when the frustration sets in. Because then he can’t help but think _So what then? What’s missing, why this phantom limb? What's the ache?_

Sometimes he even dares to pose these questions out loud, and why he’s expecting a response from his empty yard is a puzzle he’s never been able to figure out.

Richie takes another sip of his tea. He begins the process all over again, moving down the list one by one, the recitation a soothing background hum in its own way. He's still sitting there when daybreak comes, the golden California sun rising above the hills to shine on his exhausted face.

\----

As difficult as the nights can be, the real world waits for no one. And suffice to say that the minimal sleep, horrific dreams when he does manage to drop off, and a new and necessary dependence on caffeine to keep him going means that Richie isn’t feeling his perkiest self meeting with his manager at some local cafe today. 

But, hey. At least he remembered to show up. That has to count for something.

“...and if you really want to start attracting some notice, you’re going to have to let me get you into some venues you don’t like, Rich. They can’t all be dive bars in the valley, it’s time to have some class, for god’s sake.”

Richie isn’t listening, staring unseeingly into the smooth, reflective metal of the napkin dispenser that sits in front of him. His dreams last night were verdant green, an all-encompassing wall of trees around him making him feel less oppressive and more mournful, more nostalgic. But as far as he’s aware, he’s never lived in a particularly wooded area, so he thinks it must be the vestiges of some movie or another that he’s caught lately and promptly forgotten. 

“ _Richard_ ,” Steve bends down, snapping his fingers in front of the napkin dispenser to catch Richie’s attention. “Christ, can you pay attention here? What are you a crow, getting distracted by shiny things? It’s a napkin dispenser. Fucking incredible, I know.”

“Crows don’t actually collect shiny things more than they do anything else,” Richie says automatically, still paying only minimal attention to the conversation he’s meant to be fifty percent of. “That’s just anecdotal evidence. It’s probably just a coincidence because shiny shit is easier to see so they’re more likely to find it.”

Steve stares at him. “What are you, some sort of bird expert now?”

“Fuck no,” Richie snorts, “That’s -”

But he falls silent, not knowing how he meant to finish the sentence. Why did he say that? That’s who?

Steve is still looking at him impatiently, waiting for an answer to whatever his earlier question was, so Richie casts back in his mind trying to remember in an attempt to at least _try_ to be a good client. Once he thinks he’s got it, he crosses his fingers and blows a stray hair out of his eye, groaning exaggeratedly. “Yeah, but I _like_ the dive bars, Steve. I get cheap drinks and they never care if I go off-script like the bigger places do.”

Steve shoots him a dry look, his generally intolerant nature causing him to scowl at the way Richie drums his fingers absentmindedly on the tabletop. “Well Mr. Improv, if you’re wanting to break into the acting scene all of a sudden, just say the word. You'd at least be in your element voice acting. Never seen anybody with as many impressions as you. Where the hell do they come from?"

Richie shrugs, a pleased smile being hinted at in the side of his mouth. "Ah, not sure. Just a knack, I guess."

Steve hums, stabbing at a cherry tomato with his fork. "But if you wanted to try an actual acting gig, I’ve heard they’re planning on adapting some asshole’s breakout novel and are looking for a bunch of unknowns to star in it. Probably because it’s shit. Ever heard of William Denbrough?”

A sharp pain lances through through Richie’s head, and he startles quite suddenly, elbow knocking over a glass of water when he jerks instinctively away from the table. He doesn’t even hear the smashing of the glass, and it’s not until he feels a sharp sting across his palm that he looks down robotically, eyes caught by a long, red cut carved into it. 

_S-swear it. Swear if It isn’t dead, if it ever comes back, we come back too._ His arms wrapped around a boy’s waist, riding double and flying through the streets. A startled face staring wide-eyed through a distant window as his head hits the ground. _You dropped this earlier, on your way to my house. I b-brought it with us. In case you needed it._ Bright eyes raving about the latest horror movie, arms flinging around the VHS until the rest of them were laughing that they weren’t even going to get a chance to watch it, not if it goes flying through the window. Two little kids, napping together on the grass until a lady comes out to drape a blanket over them. _Nah. You kidding? I’m with you to the end, Big Bill._

“Who?” Richie demands, the sounds and sights of the present moment rushing back to him all at once. Steve looks shocked across from him, mouth still open where Richie had just interrupted whatever he had been saying. “Whose book did you say?”

He hasn't been bombarded by images like these outside of his dreams since that day at the restaurant, and to do so now is a trip and a fucking half. Maybe he’s more tired than he had even thought. 

A waitress who had been sweeping up beside their table now stumbles at the sudden shout, startled by the noise, and hurries away with the dustpan full of glass shards. 

“Rich…” Steve starts, looking helplessly around him, arms wavering where he looks about to offer Richie his own water, unsure if that’ll just mean more broken glass in a second. “Are you… okay? Have you been getting enough sleep lately?”

But even now the memories playing in his head seem to be growing fainter and fainter, and Richie can’t quite grasp what was so important about getting to the bottom of Steve’s innocuous offer anyway. Whose name did he say?

“I…” Richie shakes his head. Christ, he’s acting like a fucking lunatic, all because he can’t handle one bad night of sleep. “Sorry, uh. Yeah, no, I haven’t been sleeping too well lately. I think I should maybe just get back home and see if an ambien will do anything for me.”

He gives a weak little laugh, and jumps down off of his stool, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket and throwing some bills haphazardly onto the table. Steve opens his mouth, probably to express some well-intentioned (and more than justifiable, at this point) concern, but Richie can’t hear it right now. He’s just needs to get home, and take some fucking pills so he can pass out without without causing any more public incidents. 

  
  


\----

Three days later, it’s New Year’s Eve and the bass beat is thrumming through Richie’s bones. In the heat of the music, he can pretend for a second that the familiar yawning emptiness doesn’t live inside his chest, the very reason he had chosen such a loud venue to spend his night in in the first place.

He’s sat at the bar for the first part of the evening, slowly working his way through a few drinks. The bartender is a tall redheaded woman named Bethennay, and something about the combination feels simultaneously familiar and just the slightest bit off all at the same time. It’s giving him even more of a headache to sit there and think about it, and so it’s not long after she hands him his third drink that he decides he needs to embrace a different strategy. The dingy bartop and the people scattered across it aren’t enough of a diversion for his racing mind, and he throws himself instead into the fray of people dancing, praying that the sounds and noises are enough to turn his brain off for once.

It only works for about ten minutes, but those ten minutes are the last bit of peace Richie will get for a long time. Not that he knows it yet.

A man sidles up behind him, hands on his waist. Something feels off about the pressure and Richie feels the familiar tightening in his chest at the thought of _being seen, they can see you Richie, all of them can see you_. But he ignores this in favour of recklessly sliding his hands back up the man’s chest, turning around to face him. He doesn’t think he was expecting anything in particular, but when he turns around, the tall stature and pale blond hair jolts him out of whatever daze he was just in, and a headache spikes behind his eyes again.

He makes some sort of mumbled excuse and extricates himself from the man’s loose grip, stumbling over towards the washrooms at the back of the club. Once in there, he locks the door behind him and allows himself to slide down the wall, propped up against the exposed white brick. 

Why was he expecting to look down and see brown hair?

Even sitting along in this bathroom isn’t helping him, the indistinct jumble of voices outside replaced by clear tones in his head. _When you can get up and stand tall, knowing for yourself who you are and not heeding the opinions of anybody else - that’s when you’ll be truly free. You hear me?_ The chirping of crickets, the rush of wind through the wheat fields. _Whatever comes, he is lucky you love him. Remember that._ The rough scrape of bark against his tender palms, his racing heart at the late hour and the desperation not to get caught and sent away. _Oh, it’s like that, is it?_ A delighted southern twang, the stomp of his young feet against the wooden floorboards and a rush of heat in his blushing cheeks. 

Richie drops his head dizzily against the white stone, and tries to picture the wisping, impossible to grasp faces of these people in his head. Without even knowing who they are, he can’t help but feel in some terrible, aching way that he’s let all of them down.

He ignores the stinging behind his eyes, pulling himself up and shoving his way outside to the cool, fresh air of the night, waiting to wave down a taxi. Back home, to try it all over again. Rinse and repeat. What a life.

  
  


\----

_Riiiiing._

_Riiiiing._

Richie groans, rolling over in his bed to bury his face in the mattress. He grabs blindly at a pillow to hold over the back of his head, trying in vain to muffle the shrill sounds coming from his bedside table. If this is Steve calling about his spot on the stand-up list again, then he’s just going to have to wait. His head currently feels like every single Whack-a-Mole gopher at once, and his ideal solution to that is two more hours of sleep, _thank you very much._

_Riiiiing._

_Riiiiing._

“Oh, fuck’s sake,” Richie grumbles, shaking off the pillow first to smush his glasses into his face and then to squint blearily at the phone. Fucking Steve, god’s sake -

But when his eyes adjust and he's able to make out the number on the phone, it isn’t Steve. It’s... his mom?

Richie frowns, reaching out to grab his phone. It’s not that it’s... necessarily unusual for his mother to call him, but she doesn’t usually do so outside of their standing Thursday night appointments. Knowing that it’s not his manager looking for him should have been some sort of relief, but if something’s wrong he doesn’t want to ignore it just because he has a headache. The last time she had called unexpectedly it was because Went had gone to hospital with a heart scare, so he stabs the button to answer it, sucking in a deep breath, partly in preparation for whatever she’ll say, and partly in some futile attempt to kick this headache before she does.

“Mom?” Richie says, shuffling up the bed so that his back is against the headboard and dropping his head back with eyes closed to avoid the light for just a bit longer. “Are you okay, is something wrong?”

“Morning Richie,” her voice comes out sound amused, likely at the poor job he's done of hiding his hungover state. She’s never been one for false sympathy at the result of his own actions. “I’m sorry to bother you so early, darling, but it was at your own request.”

“What?” Richie asks, confused. “I... didn’t tell you to call?” Unless he did, and just can’t remember in the drunken haze of last night. That’s also a strong possibility, and wouldn’t be the first time either. “Did I?”

“New Year’s Day.” his mother reminds him, as if that’s meant to answer his question. “2000.”

There is a beat of silence following this pronouncement. 

“...Yes?” Richie agrees slowly. “Are you asking me if it’s New Year’s, or are you telling me that it’s New Year’s? Either way I agree. Hell yeah, new millennium. Eat your heart out, Y2K.”

His mother’s ire is clear, even through the phone.

“Heaven help me,” Maggie mutters, and then more loudly, “Your father and I put up the new calendar today, sweetheart, and it says here in your writing to call you first thing. It’s dated 1994? Gosh, you sure planned this out early.”

The words spark some inkling of recognition in Richie, and his head starts to feel fuzzy despite the fact that he’s not sure he could tell anyone _anything_ about what he was doing in 1994 if he had a gun pressed to his head. If he tries hard enough, he thinks he can see a brief picture in his mind, his teenage self kneeling in a basement with a sharpie held in his shaking grip, but it dissipates almost immediately and he can’t recall it back. 

So he shakes it all off instead, making a note to seriously consider making an appointment about the headaches after he gets off the phone, and for real this time. 

But Maggie isn’t finished. 

“And - well, this is strange sweetheart, but there’s a short letter all tucked in here as well. I’m supposed to tell you that it’s time to go back to Derry and get all the other Losers together. But to make sure to contact Eddie Kaspbrak first thing. Oh, that’s funny. I always wondered why you never met back up with the rest of them, especially when Mike stayed back in Derry all by himself!” 

Richie’s entire body goes cold. Mike. The Losers. Derry. Eddie. Eddie. Eddie. Eddie.

“Well that’s sweet, isn’t it? A reunion with your old friends. You must’ve put it on here because lord knows you wouldn’t remember yourself.” Maggie laughs, and a muffled voice from the background has her pausing for a moment before she tells Richie, “Oh sorry sweetheart, that’s your father. We’re just running out to the store so I’ll have to let you go, but I love you and we’ll talk Thursday, yes?”

“Yeah, I - I love you too, mom. Tell dad too. And, uh - thanks. Thank you. I appreciate it.”

Richie lowers the phone from his ear, but ridiculously wants to raise it back up just as quickly, to hear a familiar voice in his ear where now he feels so bewildered. There’s a slow awareness returning to him, little by little, and the gradual sense that is being made of the empty, gaping hole in his chest doesn’t do anything to mitigate the sharp pain of it. Has the world always been this quiet?

How much can change in six years?

That’s the million dollar question, he remembers now. So Richie gives himself to the count of ten to let the panic and terror settle in his chest into something resembling improvement, and then raises the receiver back up to his ear, punching in numbers that are still burned into his memory, and pressing his fingers hard around it almost painfully. When the dial tone connects, and the sound of the familiar, questioning voice on the other end confirms what he’d almost started thinking were products of an overactive imagination and one hell of a hangover, his heart stops. 

“Mike Hanlon? Hey. It’s Richie Tozier. From Derry.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a short in-between chapter! next ones will be much longer, much of it already written ❤️


	8. 2000 / Derry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I’m in the hallway again, I’m in the hallway. The radio’s playing my favourite song. Leave the lights on. Keep talking. I’ll keep walking toward the sound of your voice._
> 
> Richard Siken, 21

Right across from the Jade of the Orient sits the ruins of an old industrial plant, worn bricks and steel beams strewn haphazardly across the large plot of dirt, interspersed with decades old train tracks that lead to nowhere.

Long since disused water pumps lie underneath two rusted old entrance signs that still stand near the entrance. The first of these reads DERRY IRONWORKS, and slightly less visible underneath that sign, an even dirtier one reading simply KEEP OUT.

Right across from these ruins, and in front of the restaurant, sits Richie Tozier, stewing over whether or not it’s worth it to go back inside the restaurant he’d only just vacated.

In 1908, this had been the site of a community Easter Egg Hunt, some ill-advised attempt at neighbourly bonding. The resulting explosion at the plant had killed one hundred and two people, eighty-eight of them children. 

In 2000, it’s the site of Richie Tozier’s current migraine. 

The municipality had never put any money into rebuilding the site, never so much as bothered to clean it up. At some point there had been talk of turning it into a local mall that had never quite come to fruition, and so it lay there decrepit instead, ever since that fateful day. Folks around town had whispered about it for years, enough so that not even any of the Losers had dared to set foot there, wherever else they wandered into over the years. This was not to mention the deep ore pits, broken pick axes and shovels run through with rust and almost disintegrated into the ground, opportunities that the likes of Hockstetter and Bowers had never even tried to take advantage of. With all of the weird shit that happened around Derry, and the predictable way in which the adults would turn a blind eye to every single instance, it meant something that this one incident was so widely acknowledged, seen for what it was in the way that it was.

Why the fuck was he here again?

Oh right, his own fucking fault. Calling Mike. Hashing out the reasons behind him staying, how Richie had done exactly what he did precisely so that nobody would _have_ to stay behind in Derry.

It had taken hours in the end, first on the phone and then in person once Richie had landed, but the two of them are on the same page now, and after that had come the phone calls to everybody else. Aside from that, Richie couldn’t say what would happen here. All Frank had told him back then was that coming together in their hometown would break the memory spell they were all held under, and even though that implied the continued existence of Pennywise, he doesn’t know if it necessarily follows that they will have to contend with that now, along with everything else.

If so, how to do it? If not - would the memory theft happen all over again, their recollection of each other slipping away as soon as they all cross the town’s boundaries? How to keep each other, how to maintain that duty of care?

Richie swears, kicking an empty beer can across the parking lot where he’s taking a much-needed smoke break before any of the others arrive. Mike is inside right now, acting the responsible adult in the situation, holding their table and fielding polite questions from the waitstaff. Richie had begged a cigarette break when the jitters had gotten to be too much, his leg shaking and fingers tapping compulsively as he waited to see the rest of his friends again after six years apart. 

To see Eddie again.

Richie hadn’t even been able to call Eddie himself, to be the one to phone him whatever his own directives in the letter left to his parents were. Mike had done it for him, explaining how Richie had called him, how it was time for all of them to remember and to come back together again. He had explained everything, but even he hadn’t known what to say when Eddie’s tinny voice on the other end of the line asked him why Richie hadn’t called himself.

There had been no possible way to explain to Mike the guilt, the horrible roiling in his stomach at the remembrance of what he had done, knowingly allowing Derry to steal Eddie’s memories from him. Making that choice. Taking it away from him. 

The Ironworks gate creaks ominously in the chilly January breeze, and for the first time in six years, an echoing Voice follows it. 

_Hey sir! Spare a quarter?_

He startles, almost falling off the hood of the car he’s resting against. 

“Fuck _off_ , Jesus,” Richie mutters, but feels instantly guilty about the silence it leaves behind. It may have been years since he’s heard the Voices - another thing Derry had stolen from him in punishment - but it's still not the kid’s fault that he’s just been sledgehammered with the force of all those years worth of lost memory in the span of maybe eighteen hours.

It’s been so long since he’s heard the voices from the ground in his hometown that he’d reacted instinctively, thoughtlessly. One of the first things he’d learned back then was that the dead were no better or worse than the living, as a rule, and kids were just kids in the end. He'd do well to remember that.

He pushes himself off the hood of the car. 

“Hey,” he said, his voice gentling with intent, as he kneels down to press two fingers to the ground. “I’m sorry. That was rude of me. What’s your name?”

There’s a beat of silence as if the person on the other side is feeling him out before an answer comes. 

_It’s Mickey_ , the voice tells him shyly. 

“Hi, Mickey,” Richie says, trying hard to inject some cheerfulness into his tone. “My name’s Richie. I used to live here too, years ago.”

 _Oh! D’you know a boy named Ben?_ _Ben Hanscom? He used to live here too._

Richie furrows his brow, thrown by the question. It’s not exactly what he’d been expecting - especially from a Voice he’d never encountered, at a location he’d never dared cross into. 

His answer comes slowly as a result of that confusion. “Uh… a man now, but yeah. Yeah, I know Ben. Do, uh… do you?”

Yes, he does feel fucking foolish asking the question to a boy who’d died almost one hundred years ago, but like - what is he supposed to say? _He’s_ not the one who brought him up. 

_Can you tell ‘im sorry for me?_ Mickey asks, and Richie furrows his brow.

“Tell him sorry?” he repeats, confused. As far as he knows, none of them had ever visited the Ironworks ruins, Ben included. Probably Ben especially, given his aversion to these kinds of creepy places after that summer in the sewers of Neibolt. “I don’t understand. Sorry for what?”

 _I think it scared ‘im, back then,_ the boy says mournfully, _that I had no head._

Richie’s body freezes, ice crawling up his arms and chest like little ants, crystalizing his veins. He remembers Ben telling them all something similar, the day they had gathered together in Bassey Park, right at the city centre to share their respective experiences, what Pennywise had shown them. That had been near the beginning of all the shit that went down that summer, after they met Ben when Eddie fell through the roof of the clubhouse, but before Richie had heard Georgie’s little voice echoing from the storm drain on Witcham Street. 

Richie had even told them then about the Paul Bunyan statue. Not the reasons behind it, of course, never that. But they had known and heard how scared he had been of it since then all the same. 

_Tell him sorry,_ the boy repeats, _I didn’t want to scare ‘im, honest, but Mr. Gray made me. He moved my Voice. I was jus’ scared, and us kids know you oughtta listen to Mr. Gray or else you’ll be in real trouble._

“Fuck,” Richie wheezes, pressing down onto the ground so heavily his palms scrape against the gravel. He remembers the asynchronous and misplaced Voices of Abram and Viktor that same summer, coming through the sewer to keep him distracted long enough to be dragged down into the dark. “Yeah, yeah, you got it kid. One apology coming up, sure thing."

Mickey doesn’t speak again after that, but Richie stays there all the same, hands pressed painfully against the sharp stones and cigarette butts that litter the Jade’s parking lot. He’s so caught up in the shock, how fast and hard the rude awakening has hit him, that he forgets for the moment to nervously anticipate the return of his friends. 

“Dude, what are you… doing?” a voice asks from behind him, and the familiar cadence of it has Richie face-planting forward onto the ground out of pure shock. It’s a freaky fucking thing, the sudden and intimate familiarity of a voice you hadn’t even remembered forgetting. Richie swears when his glasses smack into the ground and dig into his eyes as soon as his face follows. He can hear the tinkling laughter of a child as he moves to sit up and rethinks his earlier stance on being polite to the young ones. Kids are kids, which also means that the dead kids can be just as much of little _assholes_ as the live ones. 

Groaning, he turns over, ass still planted firmly on the ground and palms flat against the pavement. When he looks up, it feels like his entire world tilts on its axis. 

Eddie fucking Kaspbrak is standing in front of him, hands on his hips and eyebrows raised in exasperation. The baby fat that used to cling to his young cheeks his gone, but his dimples are fucking fathoms deep, and his huge Bambi eyes haven’t changed a bit, not so much growing to fit his face as continuing to overtake it in a battle of wills. He’s not too tall, 5’9 at most, the perfect height for Richie to rest the bottom of his chin against if he were to hold him from behind.

(Christ, he has to be careful if he’s already thinking like that.)

And oh god, he doesn't even have to question whether those feelings are still there. Eddie fucking Kaspbrak is the love of his life, and he is staring down at him fondly, looking surprisingly unconcerned at the fact that he is now sitting in the dirt, likely contracting all manners of illness and malady. He doesn’t say a word about the possible infections Richie could be in danger from, nor anything about what sort of bacteria can be found in restaurant parking lots. He simply reaches out a hand, wiggling his fingers to offer Richie his help up. 

“Eds!” Richie says, accepting the outstretched hand that helps to haul him to his feet. He hesitates for a second once he’s upright and balanced again, wanting to go in for a hug but unsure where Eddie stands on that after all these years. And him, dirty and ruffled now. 

But he doesn’t have to worry about it for long. Eddie takes only one look at his face before he’s launching himself heavily into Richie’s arms, arms grasped tight around his neck and wiggling indignantly until Richie acquiesces and wraps his own arms around his waist. 

“Fuck, I missed you,” Eddie mumbles, face still stuck into the space between his neck and shoulder. “God, Rich, and I’m fucking sorry. Shit.”

“Wh - sorry for what, Eds?” Richie asks, bewildered, but still happy to hold him close. He believes it now, that all those years worth of memories have been stolen viciously from him, because now that he can see, smell, and hold Eddie close to him again, he has no idea how he’s survived the past six years without him. 

“I was supposed to meet you in California!” Eddie says, upset now, pulling back to look at Richie but still keeping his hands grasped onto his shoulders, grounded there. “Two years. That was our promise. I - if I knew this would happen, I never would have gone to New York, I swear.”

Hot guilt curdles painfully in Richie’s stomach. There’s no way he can think to confess his own part in their separation without also telling Eddie about the Voices. But it’s equally unbearable to have Eddie standing in front of him now, guilty and upset at what he sees as his own failures, when all of the failure between them should only ever fall on Richie. 

Well that’s it then. It may have been an unthinkable possibility all of his life, and for good reason, but it's been six years now and if there’s anything that would have finally made him confess this closely-held secret, it was this. He won’t let Eddie stand here in front of him, laying out his sins and flagellating himself for something he doesn’t deserve to.

Richie takes a deep breath in, summoning up enough bravery that he looks Eddie straight in the eye and says, “Eds, there’s something I should tell you. Something I should have told you years ago, really, but… I don’t know. I was scared I guess.”

At this, Eddie looks back at him patiently, understandingly, and if Richie wasn’t wrong he would say that he looks almost... eager? But eager for what, Richie doesn’t know, because there's no way that he could even begin to guess what Richie is about to tell him. And once he does hear it, it sure isn’t going to be happiness and understanding that he’ll feel. 

Because it’s not just the fact that their separation was Richie’s fault, that he took Eddie’s choice away from him back then and allowed him to leave with his mother, knowing that none of them would be able to help him if things went south that he’s going to learn.

Confessing to everything also means telling Eddie that he used to talk to his father. That if he had only told the truth to him all those years ago, Eddie too could have spoken to him for years, albeit through Richie, could have had one sane parent at least. 

Even the fact that Richie had known all along about Georgie, that really, he had deserved that bloody nose from Bill back in 1989. Smaller and bigger betrayals, all piled on top of each other until anything resembling forgiveness would have to become impossible, and Richie remembers now why he never wanted to tell Eddie the truth.

There came a point when everything had just gone too far, had gone on too long, and the truth of that was simple. He never wanted Eddie to look at him the way he always knew he would, staring him right in the eye when he tells him that he never wants to speak to him again. 

Richie breaks eye contact when he opens his mouth to speak. It’s a small act of cowardice, but one that he allows himself in this moment when it will take all the rest of his bravery to act. 

“Eddie, I -”

“Richie! Eddie!” A voice from across the parking lot comes, and Richie barely has time to turn before his arms are full of five feet four inches of suddenly familiar redhead. He’s released quickly so that Eddie can have his turn, grin turning blinding when he sees Bev again for the first time in even longer than it has been since he’s seen Richie. 

Ben has followed along behind her, and that’s a shock to the system too, the transformation he’s undergone. Richie leans forward to tug at him when he pauses, unsure of how to follow Bev’s greeting. He squeezes Ben close, taking in his presence the same way he had taken in Bev’s, shocking and relieving in equal measure after that last summer, him, Eddie, and Mike all floating around Derry, pretending that the silence of their group’s disbanding didn’t have some deeper, sinister meaning behind it. 

Eddie gravitates naturally back towards Richie when they all release each other, Ben and Bev across from them. They all stand there grinning at each other like idiots for a minute, and Bev is just about to say something when Richie gets there first, interrupting her with a loud groan that has Ben tripping, startled. 

“What the fuck! Look at you two!” Richie says, gesturing disbelievingly toward where the two B’s are standing, watching him with something resembling amusement now. “You look amazing. What the fuck happened to me?”

Bev laughs while Ben blushes, and Eddie looks nothing more than confused, staring at Richie as if nothing he’s said in the past minute has been in the same language that he himself understands. 

“Thanks, Richie.” Bev grins and Richie snorts at her, wagging a finger accusingly. 

“‘ _Thanks Richie'_ ,” he imitates, shaking his head. “‘Grow into your looks’, my ass. Friends aren’t supposed to lie to each other, Molly.”

“What the fuck are you even talking about?” Eddie demands, poking Richie in the side hard and making him yelp. 

Bev and Ben exchange a look, collectively deciding to cut the two of them off before it gets any further, the four of them falling into their roles as if six, and in some cases seven, years of separation had never happened. Ben herds them all away from Richie’s rental car, gesturing for him to stamp down the rest of his cigarette, while Bev loops an arm through Eddie’s, already chattering away to him as they walk on ahead, Ben and Richie following behind. 

Richie tries hard not to think about the optics of that old Looney Tunes cartoon, Pepe le Pew following dazedly the scent of that striped black cat, beating pink love hearts in the place of his eyes. _Sometimes I ask myself, ‘Eez eet really worth eet?’_ Richie thinks hysterically. _And I answer myself, ‘yes’._

So the four of them walk toward the restaurant together, and Richie pretends that the interruption wasn’t a relief.

But he’s only human, in the end. He’ll take whatever stay of execution he’s given. 

\----

The revelations don’t stop there, as the four of them walk into the Jade’s dining room and see someone else already arrived, standing there at the table where Richie had left Mike waiting half an hour ago. The man is maybe shorter than any of them, Bev excluded, but his eyes are the same as ever, and that upright posture and gentle face has the four of them automatically standing up straighter the closer they get, posture shifting to stand at the ready. Always ready to stand behind Big Bill, their first, de facto leader. 

When they reach the table, Bill grabs each of them in turn, laughing wetly at each new set of arms encircling him. When he turns finally to Richie, it’s no different. 

“R-Richie,” Bill stutters out, eyes wide as he throws himself forward to wrap his arms around him. He’s looking up at Richie now, and he can tell that Bill finds that fact just as startling and imbalancing as he himself does. “J-Jesus Christ, I can’t - what the fuck, right?”

Holy shit, Big Bill is _small_.

“Holy shit Big Bill, you’re _small_ ,” Richie blurts out in his shock, cringing at the word-vomit and compounding the offence almost immediately with - “You look like fucking - Pepe the King Prawn.”

Bill scowls at him, opening his mouth to respond, but Richie’s already gesturing passionately behind him, where Eddie is standing talking to Mike. “And look, Eddie looks like a hot Sam Eagle, what the fuck? Is this the Losers' Club or The Muppet Show?”

“I fucking dare you to call me Miss Piggy,” Bev warns, knocking Richie’s shoulder with her own.

“I would never,” Richie responds, crossing his heart solemnly. “Janice.”

Bev shoves him harder now, but Eddie pauses in his conversation as he watches them, crossing his arms now and staring between Bill and Richie with eyebrows raised.

“Oh, you think I’m hot?” he says, amused. Richie blushes but doesn’t respond, and Eddie’s grin turns triumphant.

“ _And_ uncannily like Sam Eagle,” Richie stresses, “that’s the crucial part that I can tell you’re ignoring right now.”

Bill furrows his brow. “I don’t like that you find any of the muppets h-hot.”

Richie groans, “I fucking _don’t_ , I said ‘like a hot Sam Eagle’! Meaning that Sam Eagle _isn’t_ hot, but that Eddie is somehow both attractive _and_ Muppet-esque, all at once. It’s like you're not even listening to me.”

“I don’t think you’re helping yourself here, Rich.” Mike says with a grin, and Richie flips him off.

“Funny,” Eddie says, ignoring that last comment, “Because I’ve often thought that watching you and Bill was like a particularly stupid Gonzo and Kermit segment.”

“Didn’t you tell me once that Gonzo was your favourite muppet?” a new voice asks, and the three of them whirl around to see a cardigan-clad curly-haired man who can only be Stan walking up to them, characteristic dry smile already painted across his face.

Richie grins so hard his face hurts, both at the comment and the appearance, leaping forward to throw his arms around Stan. _Stanley Uris_. His best friend who moved away and disappeared, whose memory was taken from him, but is now, finally returned. Jesus. He’s gripped back just as tightly, and Richie remembers how Stan never was much of a hugger, except for in moments of great distress or high emotion, after which it would become nigh impossible to pry him off of you.

“Hi Stan,” Eddie says as the two of them continue to hold one another, “I’d say it’s great to see you again, but I’m suddenly not feeling that so much.”

Stan releases Richie to grin over at Eddie, and it seems to hit all of them all of a sudden, that this is the first time since 1994 that the seven of them have all been in one place together. The air is electric with it, and it’s quiet while they all take it in, grinning stupidly at one another. 

“Alright then,” Mike finally says, unable to hold back the smile that has been threatening to break across his face and drawing everyone’s attention toward his end of the room. “Should we sit?” 

\----

Richie isn’t lying when he says haltingly, shyly that he feels very relieved to be here with them all. 

It’s not a lie! The last six years of Richie’s life have been, more than anything, excruciatingly lonely. It hasn’t gotten any less painful sitting here and remembering now that it was a self-made prison. And he’d never felt more safe and at home than he did when he was surrounded by these six people. From the moment the seven of them came together, it felt like a lock fitting into a keyhole, like the anchored feeling of intertwined fingers slotting together. He never felt like he had to wonder or second-guess his place in their lives.

This moment feels much the same. They’re all finally back together where they belong, and they can all feel it, collectively letting out a breath that they’ve all been holding for years now. 

_But_. Despite all of this Richie can tell that there’s something just the slightest bit...off about everybody, and the presence of this disparity is the only impediment to feeling really and truly settled together. Richie watches them one by one, these pieces of his heart, and tries to figure out what has gone wrong. 

Stan had always been laconic, weighing each word carefully, and only speaking when he had something important he wanted to say. Always the polar opposite of Richie, who couldn’t keep quiet for longer than a second if you paid him. And he’s still just as quiet now, but his silence isn’t the same as it once was, not like the last time Richie had seen him. There’s a quiet fury that lurks beneath his eyes, and his eyes dart around as he speaks, as if the mere sound of it has the power to summon something terrible to them. 

Ben has changed most of any of them, but it’s not the physical changes that make him almost completely unrecognizable. It’s the rigidity with which he sits, the calculated pause before making any choice, whether it be which bite to eat or what words to say to them. Richie feels disquieted by the studied sadness in his face, the rigid discipline apparent in the corded, even-steven muscles visible under his shirt. He feels the sudden urge to tell his friend that he was just fine as he was when they were kids, that there was never a single thing wrong with him, that he didn’t need to undergo such a disciplined metamorphosis to be worthy of their time and attention. 

Bill’s and Mike’s demeanours are much the same, twin studies of guilt and exhaustion. The years Mike has spent here all by himself - an eventuality Richie had tried so hard to stop - has sanded down his more joyful edges without the rest of them there to keep him laughing, kept him paranoid and on-edge where before he had been simply patient and watchful by nature. Bill’s melancholy has come crashing down onto him all at once, guilt for leaving them, guilt for forgetting, guilt all over again at letting Georgie go out that day, and guilt that he had forgotten he even had a brother at all, once upon a time. Guilt for years he had spent neglecting to grieve. Taking the weight of the world onto his shoulders, same as he ever did. 

If Bill and Mike are parallel cases, then Bev and Eddie are diametrically opposed ones. Bev had always been daring, brave and true, their coolest, most badass friend. But she’s turned sharper now, quicker to lash out and with a meaner edge to her voice without quite meaning to. In many ways she may have been the loneliest of all of them - never to discount Mike’s struggles, nor the rest of theirs, but Mike at least had his grandfather. Had the farm, and a homebase where he could always return to. Bev has been let loose on the world, without friends, without family, and without even a memory of one safe place to return to, if ever there was that in the first place. 

Eddie, on the other hand, has turned inwards. Quieter and more deferential the way he used to be before the fallout of that summer, all gazebos and lies. He’s careful in his choices, wary and frantic about possible risks and contaminants, and asking permission for little things he shouldn’t have to without thinking about it. Sonia may only have had two years with him, Richie thinks darkly, but for her that would have been more than enough time to visit enough harm to undo years of their hard work and gentle reminders, patient and constant nurturing of Eddie’s independence. Maybe those extra years he had given him were a mistake, thinking that he deserved time free of Sonia’s influence, free of Derry’s nightmares. Maybe he should have brought them all back together after two years exactly, shouldn’t have waited more than a single second past those seven hundred and thirty days to call Eddie and bring him back. 

He doesn’t even want to think about what his friends see when they look at him. He already knows his own faults all too well. 

“What about you, Trashmouth, you dating?” Bill asks, chopsticks shovelling food into his mouth almost quicker than he can chew and bringing Richie suddenly back into the fold of conversation. Stan had just been telling them all about a girl named Patty he's been with for years now. How he's already thinking of proposing to her, and Richie is struck with happiness that Stan has found somebody who understands him so well, who fits him exactly.

“Uh - no,” Richie says belatedly, glancing over towards Eddie before he can stop himself, remembering that unspoken understanding that had once lain between the two of them as he drove away that day, watching the question in his eyes turn into something else entirely. “No, there’s nobody.”

Bill hums, not caring too much, more concerned about his kung pao chicken than the lack of Richie’s love life. 

“And what about you, Eds?” Bev asks mischievously, eyes brightening where she looks him over, chin propped up on her hands. “Anybody for you?”

Eddie laughs, looking down at his lap a little flustered and making brief eye contact with Richie before he looks down again. “Uh, no. Nobody for me either. There was - my mother wanted me to marry this girl, Myra, if you can believe it, but I - I didn’t. Obviously. And then she died soon after that, anyway, so I didn’t have to worry about it anymore.”

“What made you say no?” Ben asks obliviously, stabbing at some food on his own plate, but not bringing it up to his mouth. As if Sonia Kaspbrak’s esteemed recommendation wouldn’t be reason enough. 

Eddie gets a strange look in his eye then, seeming to stare somewhere far off into the distance rather than be present right here at the table with them. “I don’t know, or - I didn’t at the time. I think I - I never expected to be in New York for long. There was... something else. Somewhere.”

There’s a silence following this pronouncement, an awkward one as Richie attempts to look uninvolved, stabbing some food onto his fork and avoiding Stan and Bev’s knowing gazes, Mike’s pitying eyes remembering all their plans together, remembering, Richie suddenly recalls himself, how he had found Richie the day Eddie had left. How he had to carry him home, stay with him all night after he tucked him in like a child.

Well! Richie thinks, clapping his hands together mentally. Might as well get right to it. This is a line of conversation Richie isn’t ready to go down, certainly not in front of everybody else at the table, and anyway, he has a promise to keep. 

This will be the first time since he was thirteen that he tries to keep a promise made to a dead kid and risk the integrity of his face for it, but it’s something that’s got to be done. And at the very least he doesn’t think even _Ben_ has changed so much over the years as to be the type to throw punches when unexpectedly provoked. Not, Richie thinks spitefully, like Big Bill, his nose smarting at the very remembrance of it. 

“So Ben!” Richie says, too suddenly if the startled silence of his friends is any indication. This was probably the least subtle way to redirect conversation away from Eddie’s life choices and the reasons therefore, but it’s too late. He’s already in it. “Benjamin, uh. Back when we were kids, you saw something in the library that summer right? Like, something from Pennywise, I mean, not just the, uh…. the books.”

Mike and Richie had already broached the topic of Pennywise with the rest of them, so it's not so much the mention that comes as a surprise. Nothing too deep, as they were planning to talk more in depth after dinner at Mike's place, but enough so that they weren't blindsided coming back and remembering all of a sudden. Or, god forbid, on their own, somewhere where the rest of them couldn't be around to keep them grounded. 

Nevertheless, Ben blinks at him slowly, mouth still open from where he had been responding to some question or another from Bill. 

“Um. Yes,” Ben says slowly, his brow furrowing over at Richie, confused at the non-sequitur, and understandably uncomfortable at the topic. As is everybody, the first mention of Pennywise at the table casting a dark shadow over the group as a whole. “Yes, an - uh. A red balloon. And, um. A headless kid. In the basement.”

“Right,” Richie bobs his head, nervous energy launching his body into constant motion, legs jiggling underneath the table and fingers tapping out an unconscious staccato on the dark wood tabletop. “Right. Classic headless kid. Sure.”

“Sorry, but - why?” Ben asks him, eyes still startled.

“No reason!” Richie says, too loud and too quick. Stan is looking at him like a particularly frustrating puzzle that he hasn’t figured out how to solve. Everybody else looks varying degrees of startled, but Eddie’s face is one of somebody searching backwards in their memory for some specific kind of knowledge, frustrated not at Richie himself (like Stan), but at himself for missing something crucial. “Nothing, I just bet he’d be super sorry for doing that if we could ask him. The headless kid, that is. Just a thought.”

Ben looks a bit agitated at this, but Richie was right that it doesn’t drive him to throw any punches, so there’s at least that he can hold onto. 

“Richie, what the fuck?” Bev says, frown lines appearing in her face, a hand reaching out to place softly on Ben’s arm. 

“Sorry! I just - it was just a thought,” Richie says lamely, wishing fervently for somebody else to say something stupid and take the table’s attention off of him and onto somebody else so he can sink down into the floor like he wants to. 

“The hell?” Bill asks with a confused frown, ‘Do you think _Paul Bunyan_ would be sorry if you asked him, R-Richie?”

The comment hits like a bullet in his chest, and Richie tucks his face down so that his chin is against his sternum. He shouldn’t have promised that kid anything. He should have expected this kind of reaction, and he doesn’t blame them for it, because god knows he would be taken aback if one of the others had said something like this unprompted. He doesn't want them to think he'd say something like that to Ben just to take the attention off himself from a potentially uncomfortable conversation, but as he can't tell them the real reason why, he's forced to stay quiet instead. Shame and disgust and fear are all swirling around in him like a volcano at the thought of that day in the park, running out of the arcade, and he feels all of thirteen years old again. Scared, hating himself. Sick. He never did tell Bill or any of the others exactly what the context of that particular attack had been, so he doesn’t have the right to be mad about it now, but that doesn’t mean the comment doesn’t hit him like a slap to the face. 

“Sorry.” Richie says quietly. He shouldn’t have fucking said anything, but Mickey was just a _kid_ , and he had asked Richie to do this for him. It’s just his own fucking luck that this happens to him every single time he tries. 

Eddie whirls around like a shot to glare at Bill. Bill stares back at him, raising his arms as if to say _What? He’s the one who said it!_ and Eddie’s eyes narrow.

“I’ve read your new book, Bill,” Eddie says abruptly. He watches Bill’s face light up before ruthlessly quashing it with a: “The ending sucked. You should work on that for the next one.”

Richie chokes on his drink in surprise, while Bev and Stan seem to be muffling hysterical laughter into their hands from across the table. Mike looks torn between laughing himself and unjustifiably defending Bill’s authorial genius, and Ben is attempting to look maturely above it all, staring resolutely down at the table.

“Okay, okay,” Mike says diplomatically, holding his hands up when Bill opens his mouth to respond to the constructive criticism. “I think we’re done here. We can head back to my place to keep talking, yes? About what happened, and why Richie brought us all back here together.”

“Yes!” Richie says loudly, standing up and shrugging his arms into his jacket immediately, bouncing his leg impatiently waiting for all the others to follow. “Yes, great idea Mike. Let’s leave. Everybody say, ‘Thank you, Richie’.”

Nobody says thank you to Richie, but the rest of them follow his lead one by one, shrugging on their own jackets and throwing a handful of bills onto the table. Richie lets out a breath as he follows them out of the dining room, staring up at the ceiling and shaking his head. Alright. That didn’t exactly go as planned, but the rest of their stay can. All he has to do is not repeat anything that happened at that table, and he should be golden. Easy peasy.

Richie catches Eddie’s eye accidentally as they throw open the door to outside, and he swallows thickly at the consideration he finds there. 

Easy peasy, he repeats to himself firmly. Easy peasy.

\----

It’s when they congregate around their own cars to coordinate their way back that that resolution to not panic becomes less easy to keep. 

“Riche, can I talk to you for a second?” Eddie says suddenly, interrupting whatever conversation had been going on around them. Everybody turns to face him, surprised, and his face turns red, but he stands resolute, keeping a determined eye contact with Richie.

“Uh - yeah, ‘course Eds,” Richie says, nerves coiling in his gut. “Lead the way Spaghetti-O.”

By the time Eddie leads him away from the group, not so far that they leave the dark parking lot but far enough to be out of earshot, Richie's heart is threatening to beat right out of his ribcage. He almost makes a joke about Eddie taking him out here to kill him, but then he stops and thinks that maybe he'd prefer that to whatever he's actually planning on saying and keeps his mouth shut instead.

“Richie,” Eddie says quietly, “I need to tell you I - I know your secret.”

Richie’s blood runs cold.

 _He knows your secret Richie, your dirty little secret!_ Pennywise gleefully sings in the back of his head, _What’s he gonna do? Is he gonna tell everyone? Dirty dirty dirty secret, dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty._

“My secret.” Richie repeats blankly, head buzzing like millions of gnats, screaming at him that this would be the correct time for the ‘flight’ of the fight or flight instinct to kick in. 

Eddie looks around them warily, eyeing where the other five are trying their best not to look like they were trying to listen in. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says quietly, tugging them a little further away from everybody else so that there’s no chance they could possibly overhear, “I… I figured it out when we were fifteen. When I overheard you talking about it. I’m - I'm sorry, I should’ve said something then.”

Well that’s - okay. Richie had thought they were on the same page about - that, all of that back then, even despite his heart-wrenching fears about ever speaking his feelings aloud, all the danger inherent in it. But Eddie seems fucking distraught now, so maybe it’s time to quickly re-evalute what he thought he knew. Maybe Eddie had meant something different when he asked him, “California?” the way he had outside on his carport, eyes the size of Texas. Maybe Richie had misunderstood years of crawling into hammocks and beds and grassy fields together, that one kiss on the cheek. It's not even a surprise. It's all fine.

“Shit, I’m sorry, Eds, I’m so fucking sorry. We don’t have to talk about it, I won’t make it a problem, I swear.”

“Sor- what are you talking about?” Eddie asks, looking completely thrown by his reaction. “What would you have to be sorry for?”

Richie stares at him “Because...because I never told you?”

“Why would you have to tell me that you can talk to dead people?”

Oh, that. The relief courses through his body like a hit of cocaine. 

“Oh, that.” Richie says.

“Wh - what the fuck do you mean ‘oh, that?’” Eddie asks him suspiciously, eyes skittering over Richie’s relief-limp form as he tries to connect his previous reaction to what had just been said. “Wait, hold on a minute - what did _you_ think I was talking about?”

“Nothing!” Richie says, like the least suspicious person alive. “Nothing, that’s exactly what I thought you were going to say. Dead people.”

Eddie snorts, but seems buoyed by the fact that Richie isn’t reacting poorly. As if Richie has any right to, when it’s Eddie who doesn’t seem to realize the full extent of it, all the consequences of that that he doesn’t yet know about. 

Now it really is time to confess. 

“Eddie,” Richie says wretchedly, pulling his hands away from his face so he can look up at the man he loves. The still waters before the bomb drop. “If you know that then you should know, I - I’ve talked to your dad. Outside your house, and I didn’t ever tell you or give you the chance to give a message to him. I’m sorry.”

Eddie falls silent for a moment, absorbing this information and letting it process. A light seems to come into his eyes, and a small smile graces his face as more memories from years ago come back to him all at once. 

“Kotki dwa.” he murmurs, still smiling at the remembrance. 

Richie bursts into tears.

“Oh - Richie, you’re such a fucking _moron_ ,” Eddie murmurs, tugging Richie’s face down to rest in the warm space between his neck and shoulder. His hand is rubbing circles into his back and his voice is distractingly positioned right at his ear, sending shivers down his frame as he speaks. The others are looking over at them more worriedly now, and Richie knows what they’re probably imagining is going down, but there’s no way to tell them it’s really, really not what they’re thinking. “I’m not mad at you. There’s no fucking reason I’d have to be mad at you. Okay?”

“But,” Richie pulls back, wiping at his eyes, and daring to meet Eddie’s gaze a little more now. “Your dad. Your _dad_ , Eds.”

Eddie very manfully does not tell Richie that he looks like a kicked dog right now, in the interests of continuing to comfort him. “Yeah, my dad. And okay, obviously it would have been nice to - talk to him, so to speak, to know what he had to say. But that doesn’t mean you were wrong not to tell me, Rich. That’s - an insane amount of pressure to be under at all times, and for years, too. You didn’t owe me a confession just because my dad is one of the many dead people in town, dummy.”

Richie goes limp where Eddie holds him up by the shoulder, and Eddie laughs at him for it, not unkindly. 

“You look like a wrung-out dishcloth.” he snorts, giggling a bit at the sight, and Richie shoves at him softly in protest.

Richie figures that now would probably be the time to also confess to the part about knowing ahead of time about the memory trick, if any, but he fucking can’t. He _does_ feel like a wrung-out dishcloth, and he wants to just sit in the knowledge that this is one thing, at least, that Eddie doesn’t hate him for while he still can. 

“Oh, and that reminds me.” Eddie says, snapping his fingers as he lets go of Richie and reaches into the open window of his rental, tugging out a box. Richie almost faceplants at the sudden lack of support, but colour him intrigued by the mystery as to why. “I didn’t know why at the time, but I felt like I had to stop before my flight over and pick one of these up.”

When he hands the package over to Richie, Richie can see that it’s a sleek new pair of noise-cancelling headphones. Not the cheap kind either, and if this is the type of hardware that Eddie can pick up on a whim for somebody he doesn’t even remember, maybe they should have had him pay for the meal instead of going Dutch. 

Richie lets a small smile tug at the corner of his mouth at the sight, his chest growing warm with the surprise of it. “You bought me a pair of these when we were kids, too. I could never figure out why.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says pointedly, but blushing a bit and not making direct eye contact. “I did. Because that’s when I figured it out, and - I don’t know. I figured it would be nice for you. To have a break once in a while.”

A thousand little details start to make sense in retrospect. The gift following that disastrous party at Bill’s. The increasingly longer lags over the years between Eddie coming to his window the times that Richie stopped to talk to his dad. The way Eddie would go along so easily with the things Richie would say, even when he didn’t have an explanation for why he thought them. He always was smarter than anybody ever gave him credit for, and Richie chides himself for having done the same back then. 

“I can’t use these while we’re here,” Richie mumbles, a bit flustered by the thought that went into acquiring them for him. “I’ve gotta talk to everyone still.”

There’s something that he’d figured out in the hours since he’d been back home. The Voices were just another thing that Derry had taken from him, too strange a thing to leave him with without a memory as to why, or, taken another way, just another isolating method with which to punish him for leaving, as Frank had put it back then. He’s no doubt that when (if) he flies back home after all this, California will be a lot louder than when he left it. 

“Yeah, but,” Eddie shrugs, “I thought - for after, maybe.”

“After,” Richie repeats.

“Yeah,” Eddie says again, looking bashful. “And, you know. I thought maybe we could -”

But Richie never gets to hear what it is that Eddie thinks maybe they can do, because the same young voice from earlier pipes up again, frantic and unable to be ignored. 

_Mr. Richie, Mr. Richie!_ Mickey’s voice calls out to him from the Ironworks ruins where the rest of his friends are still standing. _Mr. Richie, I’m s’posed to tell you something._

Richie opens his mouth to respond instinctively, but snaps it shut, looking behind him to note the close proximity of their friends. He can’t very well start speaking to the ground with them right there watching, so he grabs Eddie’s arm and tugs them just a little further sideways, far enough from their friends that they hopefully shouldn’t be able to make out his words, but close enough to the Ironworks so that Mickey will still be able to talk to him.

“Richie, wh-” Eddie asks, looking a little put out that whatever he had been ramping up to say was so swiftly cut off. 

“Sorry, Eds, I’m sorry but - can you just,” Richie pushes his arm gently so that his face blocks Richie’s own from where Stan is looking over at them now, eyes narrowed. “Just, pretend to talk to me for a second please? It’s - this kid needs to tell me something, but I don’t want to look crazy right now ignoring you to talk to the fucking… pavement.”

Eddie grumbles something about _being interrupted by a fucking dead kid_ , but takes up the task admirably nonetheless. Running his mouth has never been a problem for Eddie Kaspbrak, whatever anybody else ever had to say about Trashmouth Tozier, so it’s no surprise that he’s able to keep up an endless monologue while still being able to listen to Richie’s (from his perspective, at least) one-sided conversation now.

“Okay, Mickey,” Richie calls softly, “I’m listening.”

 _It’s a message from Mr. Gray,_ Mickey says ruefully, and Richie chokes. Eddie looks over at him concerned, but Richie shakes his head slightly, indicating that he’ll explain later. Here’s the bomb him and Mike had been waiting for, and an answer too, before they even had the chance to explain anything to anybody else. 

“Shit,” Richie curses, squeezing his eyes shut. “Okay. Okay, It’s - it’s fine, Mickey. I’m - what did Mr. Gray tell you to say?”

 _Um - he says ‘Bad form, Peter. You didn’t wait your time,’_ Mickey recites carefully, ‘ _But I guess if you can break the rules, then so can I.’_

Eddie is still talking, but looks more concerned at Richie’s tense silence than he did at his compulsive, panicked swearing.

“What does that mean, Mickey.” Richie asks quietly. His heart is thumping so hard it almost drowns out what he hears next. 

_And then he also says: ‘He th-thrusts his f-fists against the p-posts, and still insists he sees the gh-ghosts. Or - is it under the posts?’_

Richie’s head flashes up on instinct, turning around to seek out Bill’s silhouette in the dark, that stupid childhood rhyme echoing in his head from years of hearing Bill mutter it under his breath. The danger doesn’t hit him at first, and he thinks he’s misunderstood the warning completely - Bill is still just standing there, after all, a little further away from where the rest of them are congregated, maybe, but looking generally unconcerned overall. 

But it’s in the next second that he sees a flash of movement above Bill, and he’s shoving Eddie very suddenly out the way and running forward to football-tackle Bill onto the ground, rolling away from the spot where a huge mass of broken timber now lies. The wooden tipple structure from where the pieces had broken off creaks ominously above them in the wind, and for a second before he hits the ground, he could swear he sees a flash of white and red that’s gone in the next.

Their friends are all shouting now, running over to check on them. Richie rolls off of Bill with a groan, and stumbles sorely when Eddie’s arms come under his armpits to haul him up. His hands are pattern all over his face and chest, but he’s missing his glasses so can’t even appreciate the close presence. ("I saw him, I saw the fucking clown." he can hear Stan saying in the background, and the low soothing tones of Ben following.)

“Are you okay?” Eddie demands, thumbs coming up to pull at his eyes and check his pupil reaction. Richie is dazed, by the sudden almost-fatality, by the quick glance of Pennywise, by Eddie’s close close close hands and soft voice. 

“What the f-fuck do you mean is _Richie_ okay?” Bill grumbles at him, accepting the hand Mike offers him to pull him up from the ground too and brushing the dirt off of his shirt when he regains his footing. “ _I’m_ the one who almost became the hundred and th-third victim of Derry f-fucking Ironworks. Thank you, though, Rich.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, but flashes a look over to Richie just before he abandons him to see to Bill. 

“We have too many fucking friends,” he murmurs, amusement dancing in his eyes and not giving Richie a chance to respond to that before he’s stroking his cheek with one finger and turning around to check on Bill.

Richie has to seat himself on the ground, back leaning against the trunk of somebody’s car while the rest of them sort themselves out, or in Bill’s case, are sorted out by Eddie. His head is spinning with everything that has happened in such close proximity to one another since everybody else has arrived, and they’ve not even talked about what Richie knows yet. Even the edited version he’ll have to tell them, about making an educated guess knowing that everybody before him had forgotten, with only Eddie there to suspect it went deeper all along. 

“Back to mine,” Mike says eventually, watching them all with eagle eyes. “But I think we should pair up instead of taking a bunch of separate vehicles. It’s obviously not safe to go anywhere alone right now. The rest of them should be fine if we leave them here, and we can come back to get them in the morning if we need to. There's enough room at the farm for all of them.”

They all let out a collective murmur of agreement, grouping up without a thought: Bill hoisting himself up into Mike’s truck, Ben squeezing his shoulders in to fit into Bev’s car, and Eddie and Stan trailing along behind Richie, obviously planning on seating themselves in his unnecessarily fancy sports car. 

Which, now that he thinks about it, may have had an ulterior motive behind it. Richie had never been one for cars himself, but _one_ of them certainly had. Richie throws a curious glance over to see what car Eddie brought himself here in, and it feels like his lungs constrict when he sees that it’s still Went’s beat-up old car, the same one Richie had given to him back when they were sixteen and hoped fervently he might be able to escape in someday. 

“Everybody say thank you, Richie, my ass.” Bev mutters, shaking her head and pulling herself into the driver’s seat of her car beside Ben. “Welcome to Derry! In case you missed it, here’s a murder attempt from a fucking _clown_. Bet you missed him!”

Richie salutes to her as the two of them speed off, not waiting for Mike and Bill’s truck to pull out and follow, the way to Mike’s farm still hardwired into all of their collective memories like a childhood friend’s landline. The latter two follow a couple minutes after, getting distracted along the way by a conversation about Bill’s book, and Richie figures that the two left in the parking lot will hop into his car so they can get going too. 

He is wrong. 

“Actually - Eds,” Stan says, where he has stopped still to lean against the car he arrived in while Eddie and Richie started to walk over to the car that will take them away. He still looks flustered from sighting the clown earlier, but resolute in a different way now, too. “Can I speak with you for a minute?”

Eddie pauses in his walk, causing Richie to reflexively stumble from how close they’re pressed together. But he gives a little nod to Stan after a moment and separates himself to make his way over to him. When he gets there, Stan doesn't say anything, arms crossed as he waits for Richie to leave. 

Richie waits, but throws his hands up innocently when Stan serves him with a pointed look and makes a dismissive gesture with his hands. He can’t exactly say anything about it, not after Eddie pulled him aside to have their own hushed discussion earlier, but _still_. He complies eventually, shutting himself into his car with grumbled swears, tapping his fingers restlessly along the steering wheel while he waits for them to finish. 

Outside the car, Stan still hasn’t said anything, gaze caught somewhere behind Eddie’s head and apparently waiting for him to make the first move. 

“What’s up, Stan?” Eddie asks, nervous coiling in his gut at the uncharacteristic silence. 

“Richie wasn’t looking in Bill’s direction before he ran to catch him,” Stan states clearly, but doesn’t continue the sentence after that, watching Eddie carefully for his reaction.

Eddie has no intention of lying to Stan, but neither is he willing to spill all of Richie’s secrets if he isn’t ready for everyone else to know. He was surprised to hear, actually, that Stan didn’t already know, that Eddie was the first of their friends to be told, but nevertheless. Richie's choice. Always Richie's choice.

“No, he wasn’t.” Eddie confirms carefully, watching Stan back.

“And you didn’t tell him what was going to happen, because you didn’t see either.” 

“No,” Eddie agrees, “I didn’t.”

Stan waits, but no more information is forthcoming, so he lets out a frustrated sound and throws his hands up.

“Then how _did_ he know it, Eddie?” Stan asks, brow furrowed. Eddie feels a pang of regret that he can’t explain it to Stan, but it’s not his secret to tell, even if he regrets the way that this puzzle will twist and turn in Stan’s so perfectly ordered mind. “And back at dinner - what was that about Ben and the kid at the library? Why did he say that?”

“I can’t tell you Stan,” Eddie says quietly. “I’m sorry. I do know, but I can’t say. You’ll just have to trust me on that.”

Stan doesn’t say anything to this, and Eddie supposes that’s fair. The concept of trust has never been in question between them, and that’s not what Stan is doubting here now. 

“Do I have to worry about him?” Stan finally asks, and that’s what it all really comes down to, in the end. Whenever Stan and Eddie had met up back then, whenever they’d put their heads together to figure out how to cheer Richie up, it was never about gossiping, or tattling, or some sort of hero complex. The both of them, more than anything, just wanted to make sure that Richie was okay. And they were the ones best equipped to do it. 

Eddie gives Stan a regretful smile. “You always have to worry about Richie.”

The sigh Stan lets out at this is long and heavy, one of resigned acceptance but continued frustration. But it’s okay, Eddie thinks, because it won’t be a problem for much longer. After all this, Richie can explain it to all of them finally, and they can all leave this place together, remembering still and keeping a tight hold of one another. He refuses to consider any other possibility.

Maybe if he’s lucky, he can even go home with Richie. If that’s something he still wants. If it’s something he’s lucky enough to still have, after all these years.

The thought feels almost too impossible to consider. Something too good to ever hope to come true.

  
  



	9. 2000 / Derry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river but then he’s still left with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away but then he’s still left with his hands._
> 
> Richard Siken, Boot Theory

The basement of the Hanlon home is more quiet now than it has ever been in Richie’s newly-recovered memory. Certainly quieter than on any other occasion in which the seven of them were gathered there together, long days and nights spent lounging in the cool shade of the basement while Leroy Hanlon puttered about above, hollering down the stairs for them to keep it down every so often, a reprimand that was only to be remembered for ten minutes before they’d ramp back up and the cycle would repeat itself all over again. 

Now though, the air around them is uncharacteristically quiet and thick with tension.

Richie feels a compulsive need to shatter the silence with something, _anything_ , as he always does - crack a few jokes, or rib Eddie until he’s red in the face and shoving back at him, tiny grin well hidden under a put-upon scowl. But the tension around them all is so thick that it feels as if it has a physical chokehold on even Richie’s throat - he’d almost opened his mouth to ask Mike about his grandfather, how Leroy was doing or if he was even still alive.

He'd just as quickly decided that he couldn’t stand it if the answer was anything but a positive, and so he’d snapped it shut once more. 

Since returning back from the restaurant, Mike has already laid out for everyone everything relevant that had led up to their reunification in Derry. But even he has no answers for Pennywise’s unanticipated appearance back at the Jade. Richie doesn’t either - all he can really tell them is that he marked his calendar down back then because he’d suspected that their absent memories were stemming from something more sinister than the mere passage of time, and no, he didn’t anticipate having another fucking clown showdown once they were here. He hasn’t returned home with a full battle plan at the ready, prepared to jump right back into the scene of all of their childhood trauma, complete with the monster at the centre of it. 

Because Frank hadn’t said _anything_ about their reunification reawakening the clown back then, had he?

All he’d said to Richie that night (all he’d _deigned to reveal_ ), was that the only event able to break the memory theft fogging their minds would be the seven of them coming back together in Derry once more. But if he’d known that Pennywise came along with that - that he was an inseparable part of the deal - he certainly would have fucking factored that in when making his decisions going forward. He would never have planned their return so haphazardly, and without considering how it’s consequences would fall on everybody else - not just Eddie - to do so, if he had known. 

But.

Coming together this soon also means making sure that they get Mike out of Derry this time, come hell or high water, though they hadn’t even known they’d been leaving him behind the first time. Richie can see the resolve on all of their faces, how grimly determined they are to drag Mike out of this town if and when they leave. And that's a lot more difficult to regret. 

Regardless, Richie is starting to feel like he should be keeping a chart of who knows what about his chain of reasoning, and what he is able to say to who to keep everybody on the right page. 

His fucking _brain_ hurts. And it’s not that he doesn’t feel robbed by having his Voices taken from him all these years, - he does, he’s been fucking gutted by it - but it’s undeniable that in many ways, it had been easier. 

Certainly in terms of his headache count. 

So here they sit, after Mike has winded down his robotic explanation and has started to compulsively theorize on why Pennywise has decided to return instead. Not that there’s too much to go on in terms of evidence, there - a couple of notebooks of half-scrawled ideas, a few books here and there, pilfered from the library and Derry’s archives that might shed some light on the phenomena. But nothing concrete, nothing that could actually materially and actively help them solve the problem. 

“I just - I don’t _get_ it,” Bev says eventually, breaking the silence with a frustrated _chhk_ in the back of her throat. “Those - all of what you’ve told us points to the fact that It shouldn’t even be _awake_ right now. Right? You said - and Ben, he told us back then - that It only ever eats enough to sustain himself for another twenty-seven years, and then that’s when he comes back.”

Mike nods at her, a tired expression on his face.

“So why is he awake _now_?” Bev says, throwing her hands up and dropping down into one of several seats and couches dotted around Mike’s basement. Her hand reaches in and out of her pocket where Richie can see the outline of a cigarette box, and he starts to the old cravings in his fingertips as well. “What’s changed? How come now, and right when all of us are back, too? I can’t believe that that’s supposed to be a fucking coincidence.”

And unfortunately at this, everybody seems to turn to Richie all at once, awaiting an explanation that’s not likely to be forthcoming.

For obvious reasons. Because they all know what’s ‘changed’, of course, and that’s that none of them were even meant to be here for another twenty-one years. As far as any of the rest of them know, with all of this confusion, it’s as good as his fault that all of this is happening again, so far ahead of schedule, the natural order thrown out of whack. 

“R-Richie,” Bill poses, turning around so that he more fully faces the corner in which Richie has tucked himself, leaning into the crook of the wall with his arms crossed defensively. He’d been hoping that nobody would notice him if he just stayed quiet and sunk into the shadows of the nook, but no luck there. “Mike told us about how you c-called him. But how did you even kn-know to gather all of us b-back here again?”

Richie rolls the question around in his mind for a second, thinking of how best to answer this fundamentally unanswerable question.

They know now about how he’d had his suspicions back then, even if he can’t explain any of the weight that had existed behind them, nor the confirmation he’d received on it, so he pivots in a different direction entirely. _Well,_ _Eddie’s dad gave me a bit of a tip,_ is an unacceptable opening, is all, as would be _And the cowboy under my bed. And the Russian in our clubhouse._

Sure, it’s a relief that Eddie at least can be the same page as him now, but he’s still going to have to be careful to reference only that which the others are already aware of if he wants to get away from this conversation with all of his secrets still intact. 

“Saw it in the Deadlights.” Richie says abruptly, taking a chance on the hope that nobody will ask him to explain that statement in too much detail. He tries his best to communicate with his eyes that the whole ordeal was a deeply traumatic one, and that they probably shouldn’t press him on it, sensitive young adults that he knows they are. “Wrote it on my parents’ calendar in ‘94 and Mags gave me a call to remind me once they’d finally opened it. Ta-da, here we all are.”

“Wait, in the _Deadlights_?” Bill asks, alarmed. “W-When we were _kids_? Do you mea-”

Richie is struck with fear for a minute with how Bill is going to end that sentence, how he’s getting too close to the truth that Richie must have known all along they would forget, but he doesn’t get the chance to go that far. Thankfully.

“Bill, I don’t think _how_ Richie knew it is really the important detail here,” Eddie interrupts, moving forward from where he’s been leaning against the open doorway, and seating himself between the two of them, on the corner of the couch closest to Richie’s corner. “The fucking clown is awake either way. The important thing - that we _should_ be focusing on - is how exactly we're supposed to stop him.”

Bill looks very much like he wants to say something to that, but Mike is standing up abruptly then, away from where he had been sitting shoulder to shoulder with Bill on the couch, and walking over again to the bookshelf at the end of the room where he had gotten the books he’d shown them before, this time to grab out a new one. 

“The most I’ve been able to confirm is that the entity calling itself Pennywise is forced to rely on a food source in order to continue its existence,” Mike explains, head bent low over the weathered pages as he flips through the book in front of him and runs his fingers along the sentences most relevant, ignoring Eddie in the background muttering about how you’re even supposed to confirm something like that. “Which we know. But - the thing is that I can’t figure out how he’s been able to form himself strong enough to appear _here and now_ , not if he had only consumed enough to need another twenty-seven years rest the last time around. And there haven’t been enough disappearances this year to explain his waking early, either.”

The smallest tendrils of an idea begin to creep through Richie’s consciousness, vague inklings that have his entire body stilling as he tries fruitlessly to capture them. But he can’t quite connect the two truths he holds yet, too many dark gaps in what he knows still to quite solidify a conclusion. It’s frustrating, because he knows innately that there must _be_ a connection - that Pennywise has been feeding from a larger food source than Mike has been able to figure out, and that there’s an entire town full of Voices that Richie knows lurks just beneath the surface of the town, dead - but not entirely. 

“...ever really dies.” Bev murmurs to herself from her spot on the couch, finishing a sentence the rest of them hadn’t heard the start to. They all turn towards her, letting their heavy attention switch from weighing on Mike and Richie respectively to rest on her instead, and she flushes under the sudden attention, probably not having meant to speak aloud at all. 

The weight lifted off of Richie at the redirection of attention is a tangible one, but one that he isn't able to appreciate as he himself startles at the sound. There had been times like this after the first go round with Pennywise, too - moments where one of them seemed unconsciously to react or respond to another’s thoughts, with no good reason why they should have been on the same topic at all.

He doesn’t know whether or not to hope that Bev provides the answers to his previous contemplations now. 

“What did you say, Bev?” Stan asks, not ungently, and Bev looks at him as if startled that anybody had heard her speak at all.

“Oh, it’s - um. Before I met you all at the restaurant, I stopped at my old place,” Bev explains, not meeting any of their gazes as she worries her bottom lip between her teeth. “I don’t know why I did, but I just felt like - like I _had_ to. And I - I didn’t stay long, obviously, but there was an old woman living there now, and that’s what she said to me. I don’t know why.”

“Said what?” Ben asks, practically vibrating like the rest of them waiting for the answer, but trying his best to keep a measured tone so it doesn’t feel quite so much like a bombardment, cognizant of how heavy their full attention can be. Richie can empathize. 

“‘Nobody in Derry ever really dies.’” Bev recites softly. “That’s exactly what she said. I didn’t understand what she meant by it, it’s just - what Mike said made me think of her. I don’t know.”

Eddie had turned to face Richie as soon as the first sentence had fallen from Bev’s mouth. His face is making a complicated expression, but Richie can tell that he must be reaching the same conclusions that he himself had, about the two facts being somehow connected. But it’s not something they should talk about right now, here and now, in front of everybody, and so Richie shakes his head minutely at Eddie, indicating that he should hold it for a later time. 

That’s fine, anyway. Mike has moved on to a different topic in the meantime, gently relieving Bev of the pressure of everybody’s gazes, unaware of the conversation that had taken place silently in front of him. 

“But - there is something I’ve read about that might work,” Mike says, nervous glances thrown around to where they all lie scattered out across the room. He pulls one of the older looking books back towards himself, and rests a finger delicately on the page that holds the apparent solution. “It’s called the _Ritual of Chüd_. It’s - it would involve each of us having to locate an emotionally significant item from our past, something representative of our deepest fears, and to use these items as a sort of sacrifice.”

The rest of them share glances around at each other as they try to digest this. 

“And are you s-sure that it’s safe, Mikey?” Bill asks reluctantly. He looks as if he didn’t want to ask the question at all, but Bill was not a person able to hold things inside of himself without giving them name. It’s not in the same way that Richie is, but he’d always felt a sort of deep kinship for it anyway - the fact that Bill always, always had to say things out loud, no matter how hurtful or scary. 

“As safe as it can be,” Mike answers defensively, holding the volume up against himself almost like an unconscious shield. “I did the best I could to find answers while the rest of you were gone. It’s not as if I had any help.”

Bill and Bev’s faces fall at the reminder, while Stan looks regretful. Richie huffs out a sharp breath through his nose and rubs at his forehead to will away the oncoming headache he can feel pounding at his temples. 

“I know M-Mike, and I’m sorry,” Bill says earnestly, reaching forward to tug at Mike’s tense arms and wrapping his smaller fingers around the muscles and bones he finds there. “We sh-should’ve done something. Made sure you wouldn’t be here al-alone.”

“Well, it’s not like all of us could have,” Ben says defensively. “Most of us were gone by the time colleges were even a question. Even you were, Bill.”

Bill concedes the point with a downturned mouth and pathetic shrug. 

“That’s right,” Bev says, with a studious frown, looking off into the distance, as if the wall were miles from her and not mere feet. “I moved right after Bill. Ben must have been right after that. And then - Stan?”

With this, she looks over to the couch where the latter is sitting, waiting for him to confirm her suspicions. 

“I moved away last,” Stan responds reluctantly after a moment’s hesitation. “Not counting Richie or Eddie.”

“Okay, right,” Bev nods, knocking Ben a little with her elbow. “And we obviously wouldn’t have just left if we knew Mike was planning on staying.”

“Wait, what about you t-two?” Bill asks, glancing over at the direction that Richie and Eddie are placed in. “How c-come you guys didn’t kn-know?”

“Mike never said!” Eddie protests, face reddening at the implication that he would have knowingly let any of his friends down. Richie just feels more tired. 

“Neither of you _asked_?”

“We did!” Eddie defends, face crumpling almost imperceptibly. “We _did_ ask, Mike told us he was going to Florida!”

“Mike isn’t exactly a great liar, Eddie, did neither of you think t-”

“Hey,” Richie says sharply, turning abruptly away from the wall he had for the past hour been attempting to become a part of. “What the fuck is this? Are you all forgetting that it’s _Pennywise’s_ fault that our brains became a fucking free-for-all, not ours? How the fuck does it help for any of us to be blaming each other for that?”

The three of them look a little chastened by this, while Stan nods his head in firm agreement. Poor Mike just looks more awkward than anything, a displeased little frown tugging at the side of his mouth at the discordance.

“Well - anyway I was thinking we could start with it in the Barrens tomorrow,” he tries diplomatically, sending a weak smile out to the room at large. “Try to retrace our steps from that summer, you know. It couldn’t hurt." 

Wordlessly, the disagreement from earlier is dropped as everybody practically clambers over each other to ask him the obvious clarifying questions, buoyed by the possibility of an easy fix to their supernatural problem, but Richie is no longer listening. 

He’s sure that Eddie or Stan will explain it all to him when necessary, but it’s been such a long day already, and he’s just too fucking wrung out to be expected to comprehend some new mystical ritual they’ll all apparently have to perform in just hours time. Not when he has so many other things he still needs to figure out, more than one of which he’s sure will be supernatural as well. It’d be his fucking luck. 

For now, he just tries to sit content in the familiarity of Mike’s dark basement, the smell of it exactly the same, even after all these years. Outside the window, the night is cool and dark, and the sound of the crickets and wind whistling through the wheat fields is identical to the noises that had rushed through his ears that night on the porch where he’d spilled his soul to Leroy Hanlon and hadn’t been punished for it. It feels like a memory to take heart in, here and now. 

God knows there aren’t too many of those lying around.

—

_Well, would you look at that. If it isn’t my malen'kiy krolik, come home at last._

Viktor’s kind voice is the first thing that Richie hears when the seven of them cross the threshold of the forest the next morning, and it puts a beaming smile on his face that he wouldn’t be able to explain if any one of them were to stop and ask. His dark mood from last night has dissipated somewhat with the rise of the sun this morning, and even if it’s a temporary reprieve, he’s decided to take whatever chemical artifice he’s offered.

He wouldn’t be able to help his smile now anyways - he’s spent the last six years without even the hint of a Voice beneath the ground, and while hearing young Mickey at the Ironworks was like dipping a toe back in the water, it still doesn’t come close to hearing such a familiar voice, especially not the full submergence of once again being able to hear one of his old friends. 

He can’t respond, not with all of his friends still around him, but he brushes a soft hand against the low-hanging branch of a nearby tree, and he knows that Viktor understands the intimation. He’ll do his best to slip away and talk to him after they’re all done here, but for now, Mike has them searching for their old clubhouse, and with all of them so laser-focused on the goal, Richie would feel guilty if he alone were to drop the ball now. 

It feels funny to realize, but here and now, with his friends in the Barrens, it is the safest Richie has felt since arriving back in his hometown last night. 

He supposes that it isn’t too surprising, really, although the thought of feeling safe anywhere in Derry, especially under the circumstances, should by all rights be fucking laughable. But despite the danger that had lurked around every corner of their town, nothing truly bad had ever happened to him down here. 

Hell, the first time something had even gotten close, Viktor had warned him of it in time to get them all to safety, and none of them had been any the worse off for it when all was said and done. None but Betty Ripsom. 

No, the Barrens were the site of endless hours of joy and carefree contentment with his friends, moreso before the horrors of 1989, but not necessarily threatened by it afterwards. It’s where they had met Ben, where Eddie had learned to ride his bike under the watchful eye of Bill, Stan, and Richie, where Stan had led them through quiet birdwatching tours, his genuine, soft smile making its rare appearance for them. So many precious memories infusing every inch of this space, and always with the soft voice of Viktor underlying them. 

He’s missed it all. And he’s already planning on how he’ll break into his own childhood bedroom to have a chat with Abram, too, if he hasn’t been killed by the time he gets a chance. That's a non-negotiable for him. 

Richie’s musings are cut off by the sound of Bill calling the rest of them over from a few feet away, a finger pointing excitedly to where he can see a slight disturbance in the ground that must mark the site of their underground hideaway. Ben’s eyes light up at the discovery, and he hurries forward to check while Bill nudges teasingly at Eddie’s side. 

“Aw, Eds, remember how we m-met Ben?” Bill coos, and Eddie levels a scowl at him that would have felled a weaker man than Big Bill Denbrough. Or at least one less accustomed to Eddie’s tantrums. “Falling through the g-ground?”

But Richie’s eyes light up at the memory and Eddie groans, knowing very well what will come next.

“Oh, Eds, that’s _right_ ,” Richie says, reaching forward to try to pinch Eddie’s cheeks, laughing delightedly when this only causes Eddie to bare his teeth and snap at him like a feral cat. “When he cradled you in his big strong arms, and you were so surprised and _cute_ -”

Richie’s life may very well have been in real danger from the man next to him, but this time in a twist of fate’s irony, it’s Ben who falls through the ceiling of their old clubhouse, landing with a muffled groan and a puff of dust at the bottom, no one there to catch him.

It only takes a second before the rest of them are scrambling down quickly to follow. When they do, the sight that greets them is something else. 

Impressively, the place is still standing, it’s true. But… well, it’s _very_ clear that nobody has been maintaining it in their absence, is all. 

Mike helps Ben up from the ground with a sympathetic pat to the shoulder, and they all fall silent for a moment as they gaze around at their old sanctuary. It might have been called a calm silence, except that Richie has been trying very hard not to fix his eyes on the hammock toward the far wall since remembering its existence in the last twenty seconds, and Eddie looks poised to vibrate out of his skin if he doesn’t get the chance to explode about safety violations in the next twelve. It’s actually quite impressive that he hasn’t yet. 

“Well I think it held up very well, all things considered.” Bev says loyally, and Ben shoots her a grateful, if sardonic look. 

But they’re not out of the woods yet - 

“Are you sure it’s safe for us to be down here, Mike?” Eddie finally bursts out dubiously. When he pokes at one of the pillars to his left, a small crash sounds at the other end of the clubhouse and he wheels back to stare down at the man, who rubs a hand sheepishly at the back of his neck. Eddie takes a deep breath in, clearly prepared to commence an hours-long rant, and when Ben turns painfully away from the scene of the imminent explosion, Richie decides to cut it off before it has a chance to take on life. 

“Yeah, yeah, cool it Eds, Viktor would’ve said something if it wasn’t.” Richie says without thinking. It’s only when Eddie snaps his head toward him in warning and Stan is looking suspiciously over at the two of them that he realizes what he’s just said.

Fuck. He’s so out of practice with this.

“Who’s Viktor?” Bev asks him, frowning. 

“Oh, uh - old friend of mine,” Richie invents, smiling placidly at her when she begins to look suspicious. It’s not his best work, not by far, but he’s hoping that they’ll be too distracted by their actual reason for being here to pry any further. 

They are not.

Mike furrows his brows. “I never knew of anyone in Derry named Viktor.”

“What, do you know everybody in Derry?” Eddie asks defensively, at the same time that Richie amends, “Old _imaginary_ friend.” 

From over his shoulder he can see Eddie groan silently and slap a hand onto his forehead. The others are staring at the two of them in bewilderment, except for Stan who looks as if he may finally make good on all those years of threats about killing Richie if the two of them don’t stop acting so fucking suspicious soon. 

There’s an awkward silence as Richie tries in vain to figure out some way to move on from this most recent of offences from his big mouth, but Stan solves that problem for him too. 

“Your old imaginary friend,” Stan repeats slowly. “Who would have warned you if this place was too dangerous to enter.”

“Exactly,” Richie replies cheerfully. “Because Viktor is just what I call my conscience, you know. My _intuition_ _._ ”

 _I am going to kill you,_ Stan’s eyes say, but it’s not like he can call him out as a liar without solid proof, so the five of them are forced to move on. 

“Oh, Stan, look at this!” Bev calls from where she’s kneeling over by one of the far walls adjacent to where Richie stands. He can see a small table near her hips from where he stands. “Your old shower caps!”

Stan’s attention is adequately piqued by this, and when he reaches out a hand to pluck one of them from Bev’s hands, it’s with one of his rare genuine smiles. He studies it with a faint amusement, twirling it around one of his hands. 

“For spiders,” he murmurs, and Richie remembers in a sudden flash Eddie ripping the cap off his head as if it burned him when Richie had snorted out a laugh at the thought. 

Eddie must be remembering the same, if the blush suffusing his cheeks is anything to go by. 

Richie grins.

“What’s so funny, Rich?” Mike calls over to him, grinning wickedly when Richie hums a faint _hm?_ in response. “Haven’t you noticed the hammock yet? The rest of us should be heckling you for the hours of misery you and Eddie put us through with that thing.”

Now it’s Richie’s turn to blush, and he does so magnificently. Eddie groans out loud at the memory, walking over to swing the hammock lightly with one hand, and scowling over at Richie. 

“Yeah, fuck you actually Rich,” he says, feigning anger but clearly fond himself at the memory, smiling down at the slowly swaying fabric. “You never stuck to the ten-minute rule.”

“Wonder why that was, huh Rich?” Bev sing-songs, laughing when Richie startles at the audacity. “Might it have s…”

Bev is still talking, but the sound of her voice has been suddenly and completely drowned out by another, this one louder and more encompassing than any Voice has been in his living memory. 

_Richard._

The Voice is deep and measured, non-demanding but still pulling him as strongly toward it as if it were the Eiffel fucking Tower, and he a magnet. He couldn’t ignore it if he tried, and somewhere in the furious rushing of sound in his mind, he finds that he doesn’t even want to. It’s coming from somewhere in the Barrens, that’s for sure, but distantly, as if it’s source is somewhere closer to the Kenduskeag than it is their little hideaway. 

Strangest of all is that it’s not Viktor’s voice out there, and Richie has never known another to inhabit the Barrens in all his years.

It’s not - impossible, he supposes, that somebody could have died and been buried out here sometime in the last six years. But a voice this old? And somebody who knows him by name, even? Not fucking likely.

“Sorry, Bev uh - I just need some air for a sec.” Richie rushes out, clapping her distractedly on the shoulder and interrupting her mid-sentence. He thumbs at his ear and shoots a look at Eddie before scrambling his way up to the ladder, trying to make clear that he needs the rest of them to be kept distracted and down here while he figures things out up there. He doesn’t wait to see if the message gets through, vaulting himself through the hatch above them and into the trees. 

When he’s upright again, brushing dirt off his front and looking around trying to locate where the Voice had come from, it’s frustratingly silent. And estimating it would be no use - the Voice had sounded simultaneously far away and directly in his ear when he had heard it down in the clubhouse, so he’s stuck waiting until it decides to speak again. 

He doesn’t have to wait long. 

_Down by the river, if you please,_ the Voice directs. _I believe we will best be able to speak to each other there._

Ignoring whatever images his brain tries to supply him with, of what Eddie’s reaction would surely be if he heard that Richie had blindly trusted a disembodied voice summoning him to deep waters in order to talk, Richie nods back at the air.

“Whatever you say, boss,” Richie mutters, casting a wary eye around him to make sure there’s nobody else around. He could very well be taking his life in his hands here to listen to this new voice, but he’s had enough practice over the years to feel confident in differentiating between the well-meaning and the malicious. 

This Voice sounds nothing like he’s ever heard before, and while that’s concerning in it’s own way, it doesn’t make it malevolent. He’ll take that.

So Richie picks his way through the brush that slopes down toward the river, keeping an ear turned toward where he had come from, lest Eddie fail to keep the rest of them occupied. But nobody runs up behind him, nobody calling for him except the Voice down by the river, so he continues on. 

He notes the unprecedented absence of Viktor’s voice, though. It’s as if this new Voice had spread a muffling blanket over the entire forest with its presence, muting the sounds of anything or anyone else. Even the birds are silent. 

When he reaches the bottom of the river, Richie seats himself gingerly on the bank, watching the slow rushing of the water as he waits for whoever has called him to speak again. He’s re-remembering that it’s the only time in his life that he ever really has the patience for it, when it's time to coax a new Voice out of its shell and trust to share their life and their secrets with him. The line is a scared one, and it’s no place for performative action, nor for thoughtless jokes. 

Across from where he sits on the bank, Richie can see a small river turtle making its way across a log that spans across the two sides, balancing back and forth in order not to fall into the water. The pattern along its sleek back shell is more complicated than he’d have expected for a simple river turtle, and he finds himself mesmerized by the shifting light of it as it continues tottering along the wood.

Maybe it’s because of this single-minded focus, but when the Voice sounds again, it comes through as if auditorily centred on the mammal. 

_Hello, Richard_ , the Voice says, and it’s a warm, genial one. Not quite grandfatherly - he’d reserve that for folks like Abram or Leroy Hanlon, the ones who have put in the work for care of him. But it’s a friendly one nonetheless, and that fact has him relaxing into himself a bit more, secure in the fact that right now, at least, there is no immediate danger.

“Hey,” Richie answers cautiously. “Who - uh. Sorry, but can I ask who you, like… are?”

 _I suppose you may call me Maturin_ , the Voice answers thoughtfully. _I have other names, but this is one that will be most familiar to you._

“It’s not,” Richie says, “But okay, Maturin. And - so, sorry again, but if you don’t mind me saying, you don’t exactly seem like one of my normal Voices. And I’ve never heard you around here before.”

 _I suppose I am not what you might call normal_ , Maturin agrees. _And I will gladly tell you who I am, though I do ask that you not be afraid, or judge me too harshly before I am finished._

There’s a small feeling trickling it’s way into Richie’s head that imaginary Eddie may have been right after all about this whole decision. He can feel the muscles of his calf tensing as he prepares to jump up and bolt if need be, along with the sudden pounding of his heart. 

“Okay, so I’m going to be honest, that preface doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence here,” Richie says in a high-pitched tone, winding his fingers together and apart unconsciously. “So, like, if you could please just tell me who you are quickly. Before I puke. That would be cool.”

A hint of what might generously be called laughter drifts through the air before Maurin responds. _We do not want that._

“It’s a very real concern.” Richie warns him, impatient and nervous. 

_As for who I am, you should know first and foremost that the entity you know as Pennywise is… well, perhaps the best word for it in your language is my brother._

Richie’s heart constricts, and he scrambles quickly backwards onto the grass, the better to get away from whoever and whatever has been speaking to him.

It’s no longer enough to say that the Voices have never been able to do anything to him, physically - because this is not one of his usual Voices, and if it is in any way related to the clown, he has no fucking clue what it could do to him.

“What the fuck?” he croaks out. “Your fucking - dude!”

 _There is no need to be afraid, Richard._ Maturin says, and if Richie isn’t wrong, his tone sounds a little impatient too, which - come _on,_ like, fucking sorry for reacting to that? _My brother has enacted far too much bloodshed over his long years in this place. I, too, desire his banishment._

The adrenaline and unease pumping through Richie’s body has his voice pitching irritably and higher than he usually tends to let it, a sharp edge to it that he tries not to let near people too often. 

“I mean, let’s not mince words here,” Richie snorts, but with a more cautious edge to it than he had initially come in with. “We don’t want to fucking ‘banish’ him or whatever, we’re pretty set on him being dead. Like, permanently.”

 _Yes,_ Maturin responds, _That is my will as well._

This makes no goddamn sense. 

“You want him dead?” Richie asks suspiciously, and highly disbelieving. “To be clear. You...actually want us to kill your brother. That’s fine with you.”

 _It is what must be done,_ Maturin confirms sombrely. _And, if you will accept it, I can show you a path to how you may do that._

Hold on a fucking second - if that isn’t putting the cart before the fucking horse. Richie isn’t even sure if he’s willing to _stay_ here for ten second longer. 

“And - again, sorry, but - now I’m just supposed to what?” Richie asks in disbelief. “Believe you? _Not_ think that this is another one of Pennywise’s tricks?” 

And the longer he stands here and considers that, the more he feels like he should be getting as far away as possible from whoever or - whatever is speaking to him. It’s just too fucking unlikely to believe that some brand new (alien? god? turtle? ) has appeared out of the blue just to tell him exactly how and when to kill the monster that has been haunting the seven of them all these years. And when he’s the only one who can hear it, it’s not enough to risk the lives and wellbeing of his friends on the off chance that it might be true.

“No, dude,” Richie says, backing away a little more slowly now. “No, I’m good, thanks.”

Richie turns on a heel, tries to scramble up the bank again before this creature can say anything else to him, but the Voice appears surround-sound style, no running from it even if he had Eddie’s legs, Silver’s speed. 

_Richard, have you never wondered why it is that you can hear what you do?_

Rihcie freezes halfway up the bank, his hands grasped tight to a root half out of the ground, feet slipping down at his sudden stop. Slowly he lets himself slide back down toward the water, but his guard is fully up now, and he remains waily standing even as he waits for the turtle to expand on that. 

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Richie manages after a moment of silence. “What the fuck do you mean by ‘why I can hear what I do’?”

 _Thank you for returning_ , Maturin evades. _And I promise you that I will tell you, in time. But first and most importantly, Richie - do you wish for me to tell you the only way that you can succeed in saving Eddie’s life? The only way that will ensure my brother’s permanent absence?_

Everything skitters to a sudden and deafening stop. The rushing in Richie’s ears isn’t due to any external influence this time, nor is the numbing that is spreading through his body, up from his fingertips and all the way down to his toes. Maturin could hardly have thought up anything worse to say to Richie, anything more likely to incite in him the kind of desperation that makes a man willing to risk everything on earth to stop something from happening.

It plays like a stuck record in his head, over and over. Eddie’s life. Eddie’s life. 

“Eddie’s _life_?” Richie shouts, before he can think to stop himself, regulate the sound of his voice. “What the fuck do you - why didn’t you fucking _open_ with th-”

 _Yes or no, Richard,_ Maturin says, _I must have your answer._

“Yes,” Richie answers, his heart in his throat, chest helpless. “For fuck’s sake, _yes_.”

_Very well. It all begins, and ends, with this, Richard: when it comes time, you must allow yourself to be taken into the Deadlights._

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how long it has been!! very sorry, but classes DO be kicking our asses . all i can say is jail for the author. jail for the author for One Thousand Years.


	10. 2000 / Derry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In these dreams it's always you: the boy in the sweatshirt, the boy on the bridge, the boy who always keeps me from jumping off the bridge. Oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued._
> 
> Richard Siken, I Had a Dream About You

Whatever anybody else may have to say about it, Richie Tozier is an incredibly self-aware man when all is said and done. 

Loud, yes. Inappropriate, at times. Impulsive, there can really be no doubt about it.

But underneath all of that, when you dig right down to the very centre of him, Richie Tozier is a man who has always known these things about himself - has never shied away from the truths of his life in the safety of his own mind, however much he may have hidden from everybody else. It was self-preservation, more than anything. You can hardly protect yourself against the perception of others, after all, if you don’t know yourself what it is that you’re so desperately harbouring. 

He hasn’t always wanted to - more often than not, it's been a real blow to the system to have to be continuously realizing things about himself that he wishes weren’t true. But still, in spite of this, he’s far more perceptive than anybody else has ever given him credit for, and unfortunately all of that perception really has nowhere to go but to be focused inwards at all times. 

_I have a rich inner life_ , he's joked before with a grin, and received only skeptical eye rolls in return. But it’s no lie - for better or for worse, he is master of looking square in the eye that which he does not want to see. 

And more often than not, ‘for better or for worse’ seems to fall square in the middle of ‘worse’. Why fucking wouldn't it. 

Right now is one of those instances, Richie can already tell, as he slowly picks his way back through the woods towards where the others are still waiting for him in the clubhouse underground. And the tragedy of it all isn’t even really to do with what he has just been told. It’s more about who he is as a person, and how, once Maturin had let him know how the course of the next few hours of their lives were going to go, he'd known immediately what his response to it would have to be. 

Because had any of the others been confronted by the god Maturin at the river’s edge and been told what he had, he’s sure down to his bones that they would have had a far different reaction than his own.

Bill, he knows, would have taken what was said to him without question, would bravely internalize it and undertake his given duty in that relentless spirit of martyrdom that accompanies almost every choice he makes. Eddie might try to convince himself that none of what was told to him would come to pass, and that it could all be avoided and ignored if only he tries his best, but he would still step up and do what needed to be done as soon as it became clear that his friends were in danger.

Ben wouldn’t have waited a second before telling them all what was said so that they could tackle it as a group, Bev probably wouldn’t have stayed to hear him out in the first place, and Mike’s so many lightyears ahead of the rest of them that he’d likely have clocked the Voice as not only a god, but which specific one it was before he even had to be told. 

Not Richie though. 

The instant he had capitulated to sitting there and listening to what Maturin had to tell him, he knew that he couldn’t breathe a single word of it to any of them. Not even Eddie, around whom so much of it revolves, and who already holds so many of his secrets in safety and in trust. So much of the outcome here will depend on following to the letter exactly what he’s been told to do, and he can’t risk the possibility that any of them might stop him from doing that. 

And they _would_. Probably all of them, though Stan and Eddie at least are a sure thing. He thinks he might theoretically be able to appeal to Ben’s self-sacrificial nature, or Bev’s appreciation for losses made in the name of the greater good, but he’s not sure enough of either of those things to risk letting it out - and not convinced at all that any of them would consider him an acceptable loss. No, what he has to do needs to be kept closer to his chest than any other secret he’s ever held in his life if he really wants to see it through. 

The worst part of it is that he knows that he’ll almost certainly die in the course of it, that of course he’ll do all that he can, but still might fail at the last hurdle, or - or shit, even at the _first_ hurdle, or the second, or the third. It’s all resting on his ability to keep cool and even under this immense level of pressure, and he’s never been too great at that when the world’s crashing down around him

He _knows_ all of this about himself, and un-fucking-fortunately, he’s not going to do a damn thing here to alter course. 

But that doesn’t mean he has to be happy about it. 

Richie’s entire body had begun to go numb as he soon as he stood up from the water’s edge, the little river turtle that had so mesmerized him giving up on its balancing act to dive gracefully back into the cool stream, which means he can barely feel the sharp stings of branches cutting his face as he passes through them. 

He still doesn’t feel thawed out five minutes later, as he takes sight of the familiar little clearing where his friends stand just beneath his feet. 

Strange that Viktor’s voice hasn’t returned by the time he’s made his way back to the clubhouse, he thinks. But stranger than that is the niggling suspicion that Maturin has somehow done something to fuck with the time, because nobody even seems to have noted his long absence. 

Bill’s and Mike’s voices are loudest as he steps off of the bottom rung of the ladder to dust off his jeans and turn to face the rest of them. But it’s Eddie who noticeably brightens at his reappearance, tugging him over by a wrist. 

“Oh good, you’re back,” he says, which Richie guesses means somebody noticed after all. “Mulder and Scully over here think we should go looking for our tokens soon. Fucking _separately_.”

Bill scowls at Eddie’s displeasure as Mike rolls his eyes.

“We have to,” Mike points out tiredly, sighing as if this point were already a well-worn argument. “I don’t like it either, but the book says that our steps have to be recreated exactly like that summer, when all of us were apart.”

“We were apart for _one day_ ,” Stan mutters, tapping his fingers restlessly against his crossed arms, looking no more pleased than Eddie at the plan. “We went after Richie literally the next morning.”

But Mike shakes his head again, resolute. “It doesn’t matter. It was enough time to make a difference.”

This little detail does not seem to move Eddie. 

“Do you even understand how fucking risky it is to split up in a situation like this?” he demands, karate chop slicing through the air and hitting his palm and Richie’s heart at the same time, “It would be fucking stupid! It’s like you guys _want_ to die!”

Maturin had told him about this, too, Richie recalls, of their imminent splintering across town to face all those solitary nightmares. And he knows that he has to be cautious not to change too much of anything about the events to come, he _knows_ , all of them so delicately interconnected - but that doesn’t mean that he has to go along with splitting up completely here.

Doesn’t mean that he can’t at least stand beside Eddie as he goes through whatever it is that Pennywise chooses to taunt him with. 

“And we weren’t all apart at the time anyway,” Richie denies, knocking Eddie comfortingly with his elbow when the man shoots him a grateful look at the intercession. “Eddie and I weren’t, at least. Loosen the ascot a bit there, Fred.”

“Richie,” Mike sighs, preparing to dispute this too, but Richie is still buzzing with leftover adrenaline, and he shakes his head before the man has a chance. 

“Split up and search for clues all you guys want, but I’m not leaving Eds if he doesn’t want to go alone,” he says.

Any other day he might have been worried about the beating heart this statement makes so obvious on his sleeve, but he now knows exactly how much time he may have left, and he’s not too interested in wasting any of it wallowing in self-consciousness.

“I went over to Eddie’s house the same night Bill made my face one of those carnival boxing machine games. So we can stick together, and it won’t mess anything up about your great 80s nostalgia trip.”

“Did you?” Bev says curiously, and Richie flashes a smile over at her. 

“Sure I did,” he says, “Who do you think fixed up my face so well? Not a scar to this day. Still pretty as a picture.”

Stan snorts, but Bill is clearly impatient to get them back on track. 

“F-f- _fine_ ,” Bill sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, “The two of you can go search t-together. But don’t come crying to me if everything gets f-fucked because you couldn’t follow the r-rules.”

The tense lines of Eddie’s body loosens a bit at this, the finality of gaining Big Bill’s blessing. 

“Bill,” Richie says solemnly, leaning forward to place a hand on Bill’s shoulder, “I swear to you that I will never come crying to you in the event of any fucking whatsoever. So help me God.”

“You disgust me,” Bill says back, but he says it with a smothered grin, and Richie grins back.

Mike sighs at this, the resignation of his last ally, but recovers admirably quickly. 

“Alright, so we all have an idea where we’ll go? And that we'll meet back up at the Townhouse right after?” he presses, gaining a muted chorus of agreement. He nods in satisfaction, and leads the way back up the ladder, back into the burning daylight once again. 

And as the rest of them move past each other to climb up out of the clubhouse too, Richie grabs forward at Stan’s arm right before he goes to follow Ben’s retreating back, tugging him back to pause a moment.

They wait until the footsteps above them fade away to inaudible once again to speak. 

“Hey, if you don’t want to go alone, you don’t have to either, you know,” he reminds Stan quietly. “Fuck whatever rules they’re talking about. Eds and I would be happy for you to come with us.”

Stan quiets a moment, staring into the dirt floor of the clubhouse, face considering. 

“Yeah, Stan,” Eddie agrees, piping up from where he waits somewhere behind Richie’s back, coming forward so that he can meet his friend's eye as well. “Of course you should come. The three of us weren’t fighting that summer anyway. We wouldn’t let you go alone even if you wanted to.”

Stan smiles at this, something blooming warm and grateful behind his eyes, but he still shakes his head at the offer.

“Thank you,” he says, moving a bit away from them to kneel momentarily on the ground, scanning their simple little homemade shelves for something. “But I wasn’t planning on looking out there anyway.”

And with a satisfied smile, he pulls out an old and weathered looking encyclopedia, standing back up and brushing the dirt off his neatly pressed trousers. Eddie makes a soft sound of recognition at the object in his hands, and Richie’s heart pangs. 

“My old bird book,” Stan explains pointlessly, smiling at Richie’s attempt to hide the emotional expression on his face. “The one you got for me, Rich. I don’t really want to burn it, but - to be honest, if we’re supposed to choose something important, I’m not sure I could find anything better.”

Despite everything, despite the looming terror and fear and unknowns that feel closer and closer to closing in on him every minute, Richie’s chest in this moment feels nothing but warm, body finally all thawed out. These are his best friends - his family. And it feels just possible in this moment, standing in their old hideaway with them, that this whole thing could all work out well, after all. 

He almost forgets to worry about everything to come, as Eddie stands pressed against his side and Stan claps down on their shoulders, exiting the clubhouse with one final smile directed toward the pair of them. 

-

Things don’t feel quite so simple ten minutes later, standing in front of Keene’s Pharmacy with the reality of the situation finally setting in on them. 

“You don’t have to do this, Eddie,” Richie says quietly. “You know that, right? Your choice. If you need me to whip up a fake token for you, just say the word. Nobody can make you do something you don’t want to.”

And that’s a true offer. The stupidest thing about this whole charade is that Richie already knows that Mike’s ritual won’t work. Maturin had made some point about the emotionally cathartic benefits to doing this when Richie had protested, sure, and they definitely need to go through with it if they want to make it through to everything else to come, and so his lips are necessarily sealed shut. Doesn’t mean he loves making his friends go through with it any more.

The two of them now are standing exactly where Richie himself had sat all those years ago, waiting impatiently for his mom to come back out from the pharmacy so that the two of them could go for some ice-cream together. The same exact curb, almost, and Richie longs suddenly and sharply for the early simplicity and carefree nature of his life back then. 

For once it isn’t even Richie who’s the most unsettled by the location, either. Eddie hasn’t said a single word since the two of them had arrived, staring at the slowly flickering sign of Keene’s with equal amounts fear and contempt on his face. It's for that reason alone that if there was any doubt in Richie's mind about his choice to stay with Eddie, there isn't anymore. 

“Sure they can,” Eddie finally responds with a bitter laugh, voice tight and grim as he stares into the grey blur of shelves through the murky window. “Anybody can, really, with me.”

The weight of those six years feels more physically present in the minuscule space between them right now than it has since they’ve reunited. And it doesn’t make Richie overwhelmingly sad, nor guilty this time - it makes him angry. 

“No,” Richie says firmly, making sure that Eddie meets his gaze to hear this. “That’s just what everybody else has wanted you to believe. But you’ve never needed anybody to tell you what you can do, Eds. _You_ know best for yourself, nobody else.” 

A small, tremulous smile hovers at the edge of Eddie’s lips.

“You do,” he disputes quietly. 

But Richie shakes his head again. 

“Nah,” Richie grins, reaching down daringly, one eye geared towards the still empty streets of their hometown, to entangle their fingers, giving a small squeeze of reassurance. “I’m just here to remind you of what you already know.” 

Eddie squeezes back once before breathing in deep and turning back to the front entrance. The front windows are still dirty. The lighted letters are still flickering. Nothing scary or threatening has emerged from the depths in the last five minutes that they’ve spent wavering here at the front entrance, or at least nothing scarier than what the building already has to offer to them. 

Eddie stares through the windows, lost briefly in thought, before nodding his head resolutely. 

“Alright then. Let’s go.”

—

For all their bravery, the pharmacy turns out to be a fucking shitshow. 

Tiptoeing their way down the stairs to the dark basement below, had, at first, not seemed too daunting a task. It was dark down there, yes, and dank, the atmosphere provided by the mold covering the walls and ceiling certainly not doing much to make this little trip seem in any way welcoming or fun for them, not that he had thought it would be. But Richie had been expecting something more sudden and terrifying, the appearance of some monster or another to lunge at them, jaws wide, the instant they had gotten down here. 

So far it's just a lot of boxes and tarp. 

“But does it not seem a bit weird to you,” Richie whispers tensely to Eddie, arm connected to Eddie’s hand by the crook of the elbow. “That creepy fucking Mr. Keene told you that the inhalers were in the basement? Like - it cannot be legal to tell customers to go fetch their meds themselves. And from their fucking basement?”

“Richie, I don’t know if you know this,” Eddie whispers back sarcastically, fingers tightening painfully into the flesh of Richie’s arm. “But Mr. Keene is a creepy fucking dude in general. I don’t think he spends a lot of time thinking about what is or isn’t legal to do for his customers.”

Richie tilts his head in agreement, and the minute action positions his gaze directly towards a small brown box in the corner of the room that is labelled RESPIRATORS - TEMPERATURE CONTROLLED. 

“Eds,” Richie nudges him, pointing toward the box in question, and Eddie lets out a relieved sigh at the sight.

“Thank fuck,” he whispers, detaching from Richie’s arm to stoop down and tear open the box. “Let me just find the one with my name and we can get out of h-”

The rest of Eddie’s sentence is interrupted by a low wailing sound coming from behind the curtained section toward the other end of the basement.

“What the fuck?” Richie swears, lurching forward to stand in front of Eddie’s crouching form. Eddie stands up behind him, wide eyes startled at the sudden disturbance in the otherwise quiet basement, but inhaler clutched tightly in his fist. 

“ _Eddie-Bear…Eddie, won’t you help me?”_

Eddie’s face turns white. Richie swings head his so fast his neck burns.

“Ma?” Eddie whispers.

The responding wail is answer enough, the histrionics of Sonia Kaspbrak down to a T. Eddie creeps forward stumblingly, hand nervously extended to pull at the curtain separating themselves from the noises coming from behind the veil, Richie sticking close behind him. When he tugs it finally open, Richie’s stomach lurches.   
  
Sonia Kaspbrak is lying there on the table, tied down by leather straps, and identical to the woman who had watched Richie with the eyes of a hawk for so many years, before the sickness had started to waste her away. It's as if no years have passed at all, enough so that Eddie is frozen, staring the the place where his mother lies, and Richie's head is already spinning from the unexpectedness of it all. 

"Eddie-Bear, you need to help me," Sonia warbles again, eyes lolling to the side to meet her son's, struggling vainly against the restraints holding her down. "Eddie, he's coming to get me!"

Eddie jerks forward automatically, ready to heed his mother's demands without a second thought, but Richie grabs at him disbelievingly.

"Eds," Richie whispers, trying to keep him from advancing any further, a bad feeling crawling up his spine. "Eds, you know that's not your mom. It's - it's a fucking trick, just a trick. We can't fall for it."

He almost doesn't think Eddie will answer him, his gaze unwavering from the shaking table in front of them, but he's shaking his head almost as soon as the words leave Richie's mouth.

"You don't get it, Richie," Eddie says, desperation lacing through each word, "This is - this is exactly what happened that summer, what I saw. And I - I _didn't_ help her, I just left her there! To die!"

Richie doesn't know what to say, trying to process this new information. He hadn't known Eddie had seen this back then, too distracted by his own issues. His own nightmares. 

"Who does that?" Eddie whispers, finally turning to face him. "Their own mother?"

Richie thinks of that night six years ago, laying with Eddie in his bed. _I need to take care of her. Even if she’s a terrible person, she’s still my mom and I have to look after her._ That unfounded fear, in Eddie's mind, that he would turn out like his mother, just as selfish, just as self-serving. Ready to allow anybody else to hurt if it means keeping himself satisfied. As if he ever could. 

It had been what separated them the last time. Richie doesn't want it to be what separates them this time, even if it isn't the real Sonia Kaspbrak in front of them. 

"Okay," Richie says, against his better judgement. "Okay, we'll - get her out. But then we fucking leave, okay?"

Eddie nods, relieved, and jumps forward to struggle at the ties keeping his mother pinned. For his part, Richie keeps a wary eye trained around the room, fearful that the instant he allows his attention to waver, something new will join the fray. 

"I knew you'd help me Eddie," Sonia tells him, tears in her voice. "I knew you wouldn't listen to that nasty boy."

Richie's blood boils, and Eddie's finger slips distractedly off the restraints, angry himself at the unfounded accusation. When Richie glances behind to where Eddie is still trying to work, he sees the leather buckles, those zip ties tightening and refastening themselves tighter and tighter with each success that Eddie thinks he makes. 

It's pointless. He was never meant to get her out. 

"Eddie," Richie tries, to explain the catch to him, get the two of them out of here, "Eddie, it won't work, they're-"

"Just one second, Richie, I'll get it, I will," Eddie says, too focused on the task in front of him and what he's trying so hard to prove to himself that he can't see the trick. Sonia can though, head falling sideways to grin triumphantly at Richie. 

“No Eddie, really, I think we can just fucking leave now,” Richie yells, ducking swearingly as Sonia’s renewed struggling form causes the metal bed to knock over a precariously hanging beam somewhere above his head. Eddie ignores this, too, until Richie physically grabs his hands, tearing him away.

For all his adamance, he goes easily. The relief of it is sweet, and Richie turns them both to face the staircase, ready to flee. 

“I always knew you’d leave me, Eddie-Bear,” Sonia-Pennywise sobs at this snag in the plan, face contorting grotesquely as crocodile tears slip down her sallow cheeks, and Eddie stumbles where he had been turned with one foot toward the stairs, “I always knew you’d run, I’ve always told you that you can’t, but you never, ever listened to me-”

Eddie is obviously torn, fingers back to scrabbling uselessly at the ties that bind his mother down to the bed, but pulse thumping erratically in his neck as all his instincts tell him to grab Richie and get the fuck out of here. He had flinched when she started to speak, and Richie is left wondering why they’re even trying to get her out of the chair in the first place. Isn't this just feeding into Eddie's fears, not doing anything to alleviate them, only hurting him over and over?

Yeah. Wait a second -

“Why?” Richie demands, whirling around to stare Sonia dead in the eyes. “Why shouldn’t he fucking run?”

Sonia’s face turns scornful and disgusted as she meets Richie’s eyes. He forces himself to keep still, to hold that gaze no matter how much it’s always made him feel so small, so dirty, so inferior. 

“Rich,” Eddie mutters, tugging at his sleeve and looking around the basement warily, “It’s fine, it’s - it’ll only take a second, then we can ju- we can just go, I’ve already got the fucking token-”

But that’s not enough. It’s not good enough for Eddie to be holding that stupid fucking placebo in his hands, it’s not enough for him to get away from here once again, not if he does it still believing all the lies and poison that his mother had bled into his head all these years.

It’s not enough to just leave. They have to learn. 

“No,” Richie says, holding out a hand to halt Eddie’s scrambling fingers, blood boiling at the sight of Sonia’s smirking face, her triumphant grin at Eddie’s shrinking away. “She’s fucking wrong, Eddie. She’s always been wrong about you.”

“Richie,” Eddie tries.

“You _should_ run, Eds,” Richie says vehemently, arms held tight to his shoulders, “After all she’s done to you. All that you’ve given! You _weren’t_ wrong the first time around, when you left her here. You don’t owe her a fucking thing, Eddie, but she owes this to _you_ , to let you fucking run, like you always should have been.” 

There is a slow light dawning on Eddie’s face, and Richie can see it even in the murky darkness of this basement room. He waits, breath held, but patient - Eddie always knew best for himself, like he’d said. He just needs to be reminded. 

“I - I did know that once, didn’t I?” he whispers, looking into Richie’s burning eyes. “I did. I knew that.”

He whirls around to face his mother’s form.

“I knew that the best thing I could ever do is run as far and as fast I could anywhere that you weren’t,” he says, eyes blazing, and Sonia’s immobile form bares her teeth, eyes turning gold. “I knew that I was stronger away from you, that the only sickness I ever had was the shitty fucking luck of being your son.”

Behind them comes a shuffling sound, and Sonia’s voice when it responds comes both from her tied down form, and from the slowly advancing, decaying form that creeps out of the shadows after them.

Richie swears, throwing himself so that he and Eddie are back to back, and tenses up, ready to go to bat once more.

“You don’t know a single thing, Eddie,” the voices condescends, an echoing chamber of horror, “You sick, frail, child. Hanging around with crooked, dirty boys like Richie, letting them touch you-” 

Richie’s heart thumps painfully in his chest, at the implications and threats inherent in the accusation. 

But Eddie doesn’t bite. 

“Fuck _you!_ ” Eddie shrieks, shoving an arm forward to launch the wheeled bed further away from himself, whirling around in the next second to face the leper, arms held up as if to fight. “You’re wrong. You’re the dirty one, the sick one. It was never me.”

The leper stills, stopping it’s advance to allow a small, slowly growing grin to grace its mottled and deformed face. 

“Oh, Eddie,” it says pityingly, leaning forward quietly as if whispering a secret to a lover. “I _am_ you.”

Eddie freezes, arms dropping lamely by his sides. It’s clear that, for the moment, he’s entirely forgotten that Richie is even in the room with him. 

“No,” he whispers, “No, I said I didn’t want to think about that-”

Richie’s heart thumps painfully, watching this degradation take place in front of him. A terrible understanding, and what’s worse, an even more upsetting sympathy are taking form in his brain, and it’s startling to think that not all of his fears might ever have been his alone. 

“Eds,” he tries, pulling at the shoulder in front of him, trying to tug him away from the leering form. “That’s not you. Listen to me, _Eds_ -”

But. 

It seems that Eddie doesn’t need his reminders, not this time. With a shriek of rage reminiscent of that little thirteen year-old about to deal a kick to the clown, _I’m going to fucking kill you!_ , Eddie lunges forward to wrap his hands around the leper’s throat. 

“Fuck you!” Eddie yells, tightening his fingers. “ _Fuck! You!_ ” 

The figure seems almost startled for a moment, figment or not. Richie is struck speechless, mouth hanging open as he watches the determined set to Eddie’s mouth, how the leper seems to be physically shrinking before his eyes. He really thinks that this might be it, that they might actually be able to beat one of the nightmares this time, it’s really happening- 

But that’s before the leper, as a last resort, unhinges its jaw to spew a thick black vomit at Eddie’s face and chest, shaking frantically to force him to release his grip on its throat. The liquid hits Eddie full force, and as Richie watches, frozen, an old radio on the back shelf jumps to life, starting to croon, lighting up with no external control. 

_Just call me angel of the morning, just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby..._

Eddie can’t help but comply, gasping out wheezing, disgusted breaths as he pulls away from the figure, barrelling blindly into Richie’s chest, who catches him before he can slip and fall. 

_Just call me angel of the morning, then slowly turn away from me..._

Richie steadies him by the top of the arms, throwing out another hand to shut off the radio’s ominous melody. By the time the two of them are able to turn around, the leper is still not recovered from Eddie’s assault, stumbling around the damp corner of the basement with jerky, halting steps. 

“You know, I think it got the point,” Richie wheezes, still grimacing at the impact of Eddie’s sharp shoulder into his diaphragm. “I really think we could probably go now.”

“Fucking - _yeah_ ,” Eddie agrees, spitting at the ground in an attempt to rid his mouth of some of the worst of the black goo still clinging to his face. “Yeah, it’s your turn dude. That was catharsis enough for me.”

“Motherfucker,” Richie swears, almost having forgotten that he was next up on the docket after this. But he doesn’t have time to finish his sentence, Eddie grabbing him tight by the hand and dragging him up and toward the stairs, leaving the shaking form of the leper behind them as they burst through the monochrome shelves of Keene’s and into the sunlight beyond the doors. 

—

Bassey Park doesn’t go much better, the weight of Eddie’s gaze on him during that only too telling arcade incident heavy and intrusive as Richie tries in vain to finish his own nightmare off so that the two of them can go back to Townhouse and find their friends. It's hard to imagine an encounter going worse than the one they had just faced, but Richie's mind has always provided more than enough material ripe for the picking. 

But as agitated as it makes Richie to have a witness to these scenes, (to have _Eddie_ as that specific witness), it’s undeniable that it also helps, in a way, to have his steady form pressed against his own as he is forced to re-experience all of these bad memories. Eddie’s hand slips quietly but firmly into his own as they stand there and watch Bowers scream and rant, exiling Richie from what had previously acted as a safe haven to him, just the same as Richie had done for him outside of Keene’s. 

That would have been bad enough on its own, _revealing_ enough, but it only gets worse from there as they burst through the Aladdin’s doors to catch their breath at Bassey Park, which - of fucking course that wasn’t a great idea. It seems quieter than usual here, less voices than Richie can previously recall welling up from the ground, and the silence is jarring in its abnormality. Which means that Richie is already on edge when the real trouble starts.

Because it’s not more than two minutes they’ve been sitting there, catching their breath on a small park bench when a deep, gravelly voice sounds over their heads, straight from the mouth of that fucking Paul Bunyan statue. 

The Paul Bunyan statue, which is no longer standing where it’s meant to, on that tall stone pedestal. 

“ _Want a kiss, Richie?_ ”

Richie jerks, falling off the corner of the bench where he had been perched to stumble to his feet. Eddie jumps beside him, too, startled by the voice and by Richie’s sudden movement. He’d been hoping that just because Eddie had had to relive his own bad memory didn’t mean that he would, too. But it’s clearly a sword they’ll all have to bear, because when they jerk their heads around to see Paul Bunyan’s gaping, razor-sharp mouth bellow at them from behind the bench, the bats that fly out at them are identical to the ones that thirteen-year old Richie had run from all those years ago. 

Richie shoves Eddie ahead of him, burning lungs and numb legs a second thought as he tries to get them as far as possible away from the thirty-foot statue pounding after them. He’s hoping that they’ll be able to run fast enough to get out of Bassey Park entirely - Warehouse row is only a few feet away from the end of the green, after all, with all those little nooks to hide in - when Eddie shrieks as his feet meeting with a small pebble causes him to trip over and fall heavily to the ground. 

Richie skids to a stop behind him, throwing himself down to cover Eddie’s heaving form on the ground before he can think twice. He wraps two arms around Eddie’s body, hiding him entirely from view as he shouts into his ear. 

“It’s not real, Eds, it’s not real, just keep saying it,” Richie chants, squeezing his eyes shut and forcing himself to ignore the familiar laughing sounds that comes from above their heads as they lie there. “It’s not real.”

“It’s not real,” Eddie repeats back, shoving his arms out from underneath Richie despite his best efforts, and bringing them around to wrap over and protect the back of his head. “It’s not, Richie. It’s not real.”

The sounds above them have ceased in the time that they lay there chanting, but Richie doesn’t want to be so quick to release Eddie just yet, not until he’s sure that the coast is actually clear. And so he waits another two minutes before craning his head hesitantly, peering back at the empty park around them to find that there is no longer anything standing above them, peavey hook held aloft to spear them through the chest now replaced by a beautiful emptiness. 

Richie rolls off of Eddie, sucking in deep breaths as he squeezes his eyes shut once again and bangs his head against the hard dirt beneath him. 

“Jesus christ,” Eddie finally says, moving up to his knees and holding a hand to his chest. “That’s - that’s what you saw last time?”

“Yeah,” Richie grunts, taking the hand that Eddie then offers him to pull himself up and stand beside him. “Not fun, huh.”

“No,” Eddie agrees, with a humourless little laugh. “No, I’ll fucking say.”

They stand there catching their breaths again for a minute, before Richie shakes his head to clear it of his frantic, tumbling thoughts. 

“Alright, let’s get the fuck out of here,” Richie manages, pressing at his pocket to make sure that his token hadn't fallen out in the chaos. “See what the others have been up to.”

Eddie looks just about poised to agree, head already nodding when a lilting, mocking voice interrupts them, shooting ice directly into their veins when they both simultaneously realize that it has come directly from the shoulders of that fucking Paul Bunyan statue, back frozen on its pedestal where it belongs.

“Not so fast now,” Pennywise grins, an inverted red triangle balloon floating gently above his head as he swings his legs happily over the shoulders of the statue. “You’ve only just arrived! And years and years ahead of schedule, too, you naughty boy.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Richie manages, staring in horror up at the clown, who only grins back at him. Eddie is shaking like a leaf in the wind behind him, but he presses up against Richie’s back nonetheless, feet planted to the ground and refusing to budge where Richie might have expected someone else to make a run for it. 

“Did you miss me, Richie?” Pennywise sing-songs, little red pom-poms on his shoes swaying side to side as his feet kick out. “Because I’ve missed you.”

Eddie presses forward even closer, hand coming down to tangle with Richie’s, sweaty palms and all. Richie can hardly breathe. 

“No one wants to play with the clown anymore,” Pennywise pouts, face contorting grotesquely as his head hangs. “Play a game with me, would you Richie? How about - Street Fighter? Oh yes, you like that one, don’t you?”

Richie steps backwards now, Eddie moving with him as they both try to put space between themselves and the statue, futile though the effort may be. 

“Or, maybe,” Pennywise offers, grin growing mean and sharp, head head coming up to meet Richie’s eyes head-on. “Truth or Dare?”

Richie freezes. Eddie tugs uselessly at his arms, trying in vain to move him back, but Richie can’t move, couldn't even if he tried. He’s almost sickly fascinated at Pennywise’s words, held still by the implicit threat contained in them, the axe coming down on him at last.

Eddie starts tugging harder when Pennywise stands, allowing the balloons to pull him drifting gently and slowly down to where they stand, getting closer every second, but Richie remains rooted to the spot. 

“Oh, you wouldn't want anyone to pick truth, would you Richie?” Pennywise asks innocently, eyes hypnotizing his own as he gains momentum on them. Richie shoves down the part of his brain still operating that hysterically laughs _that’s not how truth or dare works_ , Eddie now freezing too as he glances hesitantly between Richie and the clown, likely remembering the many incidents over the years as Richie went to such great lengths to avoid any part of that game. “You wouldn’t want anyone to know what you’re _hiding_.” 

Pennywise laughs again, legs swinging to and fro, just above their heads now. 

“I know your secret,” Pennywise starts to sing, closer and closer now, “Your dirty little secret, I know your secret, your _dirty! little! secret!_ ”

He’s so close now that Richie can feel the hot and acrid breath wafting out of his mouth as the clown leans in nearer, childlike grin pulling at the sides of his red mouth as if to impart a great secret. 

“Should I tell them, Richie?”

Eddie shoves forward now, eyes wide and scared as he tugs Richie's useless body behind him, body shaking but drawing himself up taller and more resolute as he looks into the clown’s eyes. 

His brave Eds. 

“Fuck off you ugly fucking circus reject,” Eddie spits, walking backwards to force Richie’s retreat even as he scowls at the being in front of them. “I already know his secrets, and it doesn’t change a damn thing. And it wouldn’t to anyone else.”

The clown seems taken aback only for a brief, almost unnoticeable second, before the grin is back on his mouth, this time directed towards Eddie. Richie knows that Eddie is probably thinking of his ability to speak to the dead, or any other small, inconsequential secret that Richie has imparted to him over the years, but there are other ones, too, ones that Richie had hoped Eddie would never have cause to find out about - ones that, he fears, Pennywise is about to spill to him right here and now. 

“All of them, Eddie my love?” Pennywise croons, leaning in close. “ _All_ of his dirty little secrets? And are you very, very sure about that?” 

Eddie stands wavering, looking hard at Pennywise for a chilling instant. 

“I,” he begins, and Richie has no idea where he’s planning to go with that, which is why it shocks him so much when Eddie ends it with - “am very, very sure that I’m tired of all of your fucking bullshit.”

And that’s when he pulls back a fist and lunges forward to strike Pennywise right in the centre of his red nose.

That's enough to pull Richie straight out of his stupor. 

“Holy _shit_ ,” Richie gasps, grabbing Eddie’s upper arm tight around his fingers and pulling him back. The clown is stumbling, limbs akimbo and face contorting once again as Eddie is already spiraling by the looks of it, face dropped shocked to his own hand, still curled into a loose fist in front of his face. “Okay, fuck, out of here, we gotta get out of here.”

“Holy shit,” Eddie repeats in a high-pitched voice, still staring at his fist, and following Richie’s direction as he starts to move away. 

“Yes,” Richie agrees, privately thinking that that may have been the most attractive thing Eddie has ever done, putting more force into his tugs, and not allowing himself to look back as they begin their retreat. “Yes, that was very shocking and, like - fucking rad of you, but we’ve got to move our asses _right now_ , Eds, please.”

“Uh - yes,” Eddie finally agrees, dazed look on his face, and that’s when the two of them start running in earnest, feet pounding along the hot asphalt as they twist and turn through the trees and benches littering the park, stumbling their way out into the warehouse alleyways and coming to a final stop behind the secondhand clothing shop across from library. There's no way to know if Pennywise is following after them, because they don't take even a single second to stop and check. 

Finally, ten minutes later, their twin gasps are all that can be heard from their hiding place behind the thrift shop, no trace of the clown to be seen anymore, allowing them a second to stop and breathe.

They do so, loudly and with disbelief that they were able to make it out safely at all, from either event, let alone this last one. 

“Motherfucker, Eds, you just knocked the clown’s fucking lights out,” Richie gasps after a few beats, both spiralling and laughing in the same moment, hand drawn up to rest on his pounding heart. “You’re like, fucking - ‘ _You wanna play Street Fighter, asshole? I’ll show you a secret!_ ’”

And he pantomimes Ryu's knockout punch, sound effects added at last moment for greater effect.

Richie is still coming down from the adrenaline high of the last few hours of their lives and the supreme shock of Eddie’s assault, which is why it takes him so long to realize his folly in mentioning the secrets that the clown had so gleefully brought up. Without his notice, Eddie has been silent for the last few seconds, staring carefully at Richie’s hunched form, a considering frown screwing up his face. 

It’s only when Richie looks up to figure out why Eddie hasn’t said anything back when it all comes crashing down on him. 

“Rich,” Eddie starts hesitantly, laying a careful hand on Richie’s heaving shoulder where they’d finally come to a stop, leaning heavily against the side of the building, unspoken question hanging in his voice. 

“Uh - we should go check on the others,” Richie says abruptly, shaking his hand off gently, and turning on his heel to start walking down the street toward the direction of the Townhouse, though glancing back to make sure Eddie is following him. He’s tense and nervous, waiting with hunched shoulders for the second that he will once again be asked what that whole scene had been about. 

But he doesn’t. Eddie doesn’t ask, and he doesn’t say anything else either as they walk the length of Center Street back towards the Townhouse.

Richie isn’t sure how he feels about that. Whether or not he wants Eddie to be asking him these things. 

At least they’ve got their useless fucking tokens, though. 

-

Disappointingly, the Townhouse is empty once they finally make it there, the absence of their friends dropping a heavier cloud onto the already dour mood that has encompassed them since the park, not knowing how any of them have fared, or if any of them are still safe out there. Not even Stan is present, and Richie is hoping that that means he’s met up with one of the others, and not that he’s out there somewhere alone, his already found clubhouse token not keeping him safe and away from the mess after all. 

Richie looks longingly toward the bar just off the front hallway, but he can tell that Eddie is itching to throw himself into a shower and he’s not exactly Mr. Clean himself at the moment, and so he trudges heavily up the stairs after him instead. 

“Hey Richie,” Eddie speaks up halfway there, one of the very few times that either one of them have spoken in the last twenty minutes. “Do you, uh.”

He pauses then, frustrated expression taking up his face as he snaps his mouth shut. Richie waits a second, giving Eddie the time to puzzle out how he wants to word whatever it is that he’s grasping for, and it’s only a few seconds until Eddie takes a deep breath in and tries again. 

“I don’t really want to be alone right now,” he says, looking up at Richie levelly. “After all that, so. I was thinking that you... you could come to my room and use my shower after me instead? If that's okay, obviously if it’s not then that’s fine too -”

Ah.

“It’s fine, Eds,” Richie interrupts him, smiling reassuringly and leaning up to bump against his side. “I get it.”

Eddie smiles back, shoulders slumping in relief. The atmosphere seems a bit less heavy as they cover the rest of the way up to Eddie’s room. Once they get there, Eddie reaches into his pocket to pass over his key to Richie, standing in the front, and grimacing at the wet sounds this makes as the remaining black slime falls further off of his sweatshirt. 

“You still have your inhaler, right?” Richie asks, fingers feeling numb and useless as he tries fruitlessly to scrape Eddie’s key through the lock on his door. 

Eddie pats around his pockets, looking almost surprised as he pulls out the lump of hard, blue plastic and shakes it in front of him. 

“Oh,” he says with a little laugh, “I’d almost forgotten. Isn’t that funny? With everything that happened, I guess it - just didn’t seem that important after all.” 

Richie hums in agreement, recalling the soft pressure of Eddie’s hand in his back at the arcade, at Bassey Park. He’d not even remembered his own, much more literal token until just now either, but at least they haven’t lost either of them after all they’d gone through to get them. 

Richie finally succeeds in getting the door open, pushing it with his shoulder and ushering Eddie inside. It’s with a grateful sigh that Eddie does go in, laser-focused on the open suitcase sitting on his bed, such that he doesn’t even notice the open window at the other end that has Richie furrowing a brow. 

“Hey, Eds, why’d you leave your window open?” he asks, walking over to slam it shut again. Eddie frowns back from where he is leaning over the bed. 

“I didn’t,” he denies, whirling around with a handful of clothes to stare at the window in question, now shut. “Do you know how fucking dangerous that would be? And in fucking _Derry?_ ”

Richie rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, I do,” he responds, “Which is why I was so surprised. So how come it’s open then?”

There’s no time to respond. Both of their attention is caught suddenly by a creaking sound coming from Eddie’s bathroom, the door leading to it cracked the slightest bit open and previously unseen dirty footprints on the carpet popping out much more conspicuously in their eyesight. 

Eddie hurries back to Richie’s side, clothing dropped carelessly on to the floor in front of him. It’s only one more second before a dark figure appears in the doorway, a familiar leering grin painted across his face. 

The two of them freeze instinctively, an old and familiar fear calcifying their bones and rooting them right to the spot. God, and Richie had thought they were _done_ for the fucking day.

“Why does he still have that fucking mullet?” Eddie finally says faintly, and Richie wants to both laugh and puke at the priorities Eddie’s panicked brain is providing right now. 

The silence and stillness only holds for an instant. After that, it all explodes in a second, Bowers rushing forward to swipe at the two of them with his knife, a meaner glint than usual lighting up his eyes. Richie and Eddie scramble to throw themselves out of the way, but it isn’t quite quick enough for Eddie, whose cheek is skimmed just enough by the sharp tip of the blade that it wells up a shallow cut on the side of his face. 

Richie’s heart stops at the close call, chucking a pillow from the bed behind Bowers at him so that his attention will be turned away from Eddie. It works, but only barely - the hand holding the weapon arcs wide as he spins around, cutting too close to where Eddie had been standing. 

“Bev!” Eddie screams, flinging himself away from Bowers’ oncoming knife and toward the still-open door, voice echoing downstairs to where the others are supposed to be back by now. “Or, fucking - _Bill, Mike, Stan, Ben! Anyone!_ ”

Richie’s heart sinks as no response comes back from the lower level, arms straining where he tries to wrestle Bowers away from him - Bowers, who, upon hearing Eddie’s voice, turns all of his attention once again back towards him, seeming to almost forget that Richie is in the room at _all_ , a strange single-minded focus in his eyes as he whips around to back Eddie into the small bathroom where the latter’s back had been facing. Somewhere beneath the panic of the moment, Richie is cold at the undeviating intent that Bowers exhibits whenever he catches sight or sound of Eddie.

“Hey, Eds, did the Turtle tell you?” Bowers cackles at him, swinging around the arm still holding tight to the bloody knife. “Did the Tattle Turtle tell you, did he? Did he tell you that it’s your time, it’s your _time, it’s your time, Eds, didn’t the Turtle tell you?_ ”

The nonsensical rambling has Eddie freezing in confusion for a split second, but it’s more than enough of an opportunity for Bowers, who grabs Eddie by the neck of his shirt and throws him down on the floor, raising the knife clutched in his hand above to trace it around Eddie’s stricken face. The sharp tip has just begun to dig into the side of his cheek again- his fucking dimple - 

Richie’s blood runs cold, and then ignites in a burning flame, all in a single instant. Forcibly shaking himself from his stupor, he throws himself forward to wrench Bowers off of Eddie with more strength in his arms than he can ever remember expending in his life and when Bowers turns the full force of his rage on Richie, he feels thrown right back into 1989, forced to grapple, swearing, with his childhood bully. 

Bowers finally succeeds in getting an arm over Richie’s neck in the thick of the scuffle, and Richie wheezes as he feels the breath leaving his body, arms flailing uselessly by his sides as the full body weight of the man comes pressing down on him. 

“I told you, Tozier,” Bowers whispers, the hot, rancid breath washing over Richie’s face as his vision slowly deteriorates around him, world growing shaky and faded as his breath is choked from his throat. “Didn’t I tell you, that I’d fucking get you one d-”

“Eat shit you goddamn - you fucking bastard, eat _shit_ -”

Richie gasps, throat burning and black spots speckling in his eyes as the crushing weight of Bower’s body suddenly disappears, a hot splatter of something raining down to cover his mouth and glasses instead in its place. 

When Richie manages to get his eyes open again, it’s to the sight of Eddie above him, chest heaving and a cracked Perrier bottle still held aloft in his frozen hand. Bowers’ body is still and unmoving next to him, eyes open sightlessly as his face presses against the cold tile of the bathroom floor.

Richie stares at him, horrified for a moment, before forcing himself to roll over. 

“Did you just kill Bowers,” Richie wheezes, rolling to his side in a futile attempt to get some air back into his lungs, just as thrown now as he was back in the park, Eddie’s fist held aloft. “With a fucking _Perrier bottle?_ ”

Eddie stares at him, still in shock himself, before slowly lowering his arm and looking at the weapon in question, as if surprised to see it there. 

“Oh,” he says, looking from Bowers’ still body, to the sticky heat of what Richie now knows to be blood coating his face and glasses, to the shining green of the bottle in his hand. “Um, yes? I… did.”

The two of them stare in silence at one another for a brief second.

“Okay,” Richie says slowly, voice still raspy from the trauma Bowers has inflicted on it, “And how are we, uh. Feeling about that one.”

Eddie remains still for sixty more seconds before wheezing out in sudden, hysterical laughter, and falls to the ground beside Richie, on the opposite side to where Bowers’ body lies still and imposing. The laughter isn’t a happy one, not by a long shot, but Eddie can’t seem to stop himself, all the panic of the last few hours finally spilling out of him at this latest terrifying development.

“Ookay,” Richie says slowly, curling an arm around to wrap across Eddie’s back, pulling him further from the body on the floor with them and into the corner where Eddie makes a valiant attempt at sitting up. “Okay, dude, it’s okay, it’s fine. It’s, uh - well, you might have to bunk with me, actually, but otherwise-”

But Eddie is still shaking his head, pushing away from Richie and looking at Bowers’ body with wide eyes. 

“What the fuck was he talking about?” Eddie gasps, heaving on his hands and knees still, gagging at the wet, sticky feeling of blood tacked into his skin from the bathroom floor. “About a fucking turtle?”

The air in the bathroom seems colder all of a sudden. Of all the questions Eddie could have asked right now, Richie isn’t prepared for that one. 

“I have no idea,” Richie lies, but all he can think inside his head is _Wrong person, Bowers. It was me that the turtle told, but he fucking left this out, didn’t he._ “But it’s not - he’s full of shit, you know that right? It’s not- your time, or what the fuck ever he said.”

Eddie huffs out an exhausted laugh. 

“You promise?” Eddie asks wryly, giving up his desire to remain clean with a grimace as he sits against the bathroom counter. He points to the knife wound on his face, and the leper vomit still covering his body, the burn marks on his hands from where he had tried to untie his mother. He’s obviously joking, still more concerned about how fast he’ll realistically be able to get to a shower after this, but to Richie it’s anything but funny. “I’m starting to think it might be.”

“I do promise,” Richie says, voice dead serious in a way that has Eddie looking over at him in surprise, jarred by the sudden shift in tone. “I do promise you, Eds. Not on my fucking watch.”

It’s silent in the room. Eddie’s mouth falls open, just a bit, thrown by the shift in atmosphere. It’s clear that he thought the two of them would try to laugh this latest horror off together, so to speak, just a final nail in the coffin of this terrible fucking day. 

“Well,” Eddie smiles wanly after a moment of this, trying and failing to bolster Richie’s grim mood. “At least if it was my time, I’d still be able to tell you I told you so, huh?”

The thought of a dead Eddie, talking to him from somewhere under the ground is too much to handle, all of Richie’s fear and panic boiling over cover the floor, too late to take it back now. The possibility that if he hadn't come along that it could have been Eddie’s cold body in the place of Bowers right now is unbearable. 

“No,” Richie snaps, sharp and angry, hands shaking where he comes crashing down to his knees beside Eddie’s scrunched-up form. “Do not fucking say that to me Eddie, ever, that’s the worst - the, the - there’s nothing more terrible than - _never_ -”

“Richie-” Eddie starts to interrupt, but that’s when the door slams open and the two of them are forced to let the matter drop as the horrified forms of Bev and Ben come into view in the open doorway, and, within seconds, the rest of their friends too. 

Richie takes the approximately seven seconds of silence to consider the way this must look to an outside party, him and Eddie sat heaving-chested and shaking on the floor of Eddie’s bathroom, covered head to toe in blood like Bev’s had once been, a broken green bottle in Eddie’s hand and the corpse of their childhood bully laid flat on the ground behind them. 

“Hey gang,” Richie grins, hysteria growing obvious around the corners of his eyes, the shaking in his hands. “You’re fucking late.”

Stan is staring at him blankly from the window, mouth open. He’s relieved to see that Stan is safe after all, no obvious sign of injury or distress on him, and Richie is just about to speak to that, tell him to take a fucking picture maybe, but he doesn’t have the chance to before a burning sensation crawls up his esophagus and he’s throwing himself across the small patch of room available to retch violently into the garbage bin beside the toilet. 

Eddie groans. 

“Richie, _no_ ,” he whines, both pulling bodily away and reaching out a hand to rub comfortingly up and down his back as he gags, “I’m the one who fucking killed him, why are _you_ the one puking?” 

“Oh, I’m fucking _sorry_ ,” Richie rasps, putting an immense effort into lifting his head up, “I don’t really love the smell of rotting corpses, so fucking sue me, dude-”

“He’s hardly rotting yet,” Eddie argues, hands gentler than his tone where they rub over Richie’s back. The rest of their friends are still struck into silence, so Richie’s voice turns even lower than usual as he gives Eddie a significant look and mutters, “But he’s going to be fucking loud again soon.”

Eddie gives a small _oh_ of understanding, ushering Richie up by the arms and steering the both of them past their friends and back into the motel room. Richie’s head spins at the sudden change in altitude, but he’s grateful nonetheless for Eddie’s help.

“What the fuck, you guys, how did Bowers get in here?” Bev is the first to speak, hands coming up to cover her mouth when she notes the blood coming down Eddie’s face. Among other stains. 

“Through Eddie’s window,” Richie replies obediently, gesturing over to the one in question. “Might want to make sure that the rest of yours are locked now. Who the hell knows who’ll come crawling in next.”

Bill’s face changes at this, glancing beside him to where Stan waits, eyes shuttered too.

“That reminds me. I could have sworn we saw fucking H-Hockstetter driving down Witcham Street,” he says gesturing at himself and Stan who must have met up with him, face troubled at the recounting. “B-But he didn’t - d-didn’t say anything to us. It was like he didn’t even _n-notice_ us, even though he almost ran us over.”

Richie's head snaps up, but Eddie snorts darkly from his place on the motel bed. “That’s a change, for once. Hockstetter with nothing to say.”

“I'm surprised he came back to town at all,” Ben mutters, but Mike frowns thoughtfully. 

“N-No,” Bill denies, brow furrowed confusedly. “It wasn’t like he had nothing to s-say. It was - it was more like he _couldn’t_ sp-speak, at a-all. But that doesn’t make any s-sense. Hockstetter never bothered to hold b-back with us.”

But Richie, silent himself on the bed, knows exactly why Hockstetter had stayed quiet, despite not having been there to witness it. 

Henry Bowers had been a terrifying presence in their young lives, certainly, violent and mean, barely withheld rage ready to explode at any given moment. But Hockstetter had been unnerving in an entirely different way, and one that Richie had always found harder to explain to the others, and so he had never attempted to try. Where Bowers was aggressive and bullish, Hockstetter had been clever. Manipulative, and calculating, and, and - fucking _slimy_. It was easy enough to see the burning anger and fear behind Bowers’ eyes when he was coming at you with fists up, but Hockstetter had hardly ever had _anything_ behind his eyes, save for delight when one of his schemes went off without a hitch. You hardly even knew he was coming for you until it was already too late. 

And Hockstetter hadn’t ever been seen again after the events of that summer, either. Most folks had assumed he just skipped town, while to others the absence slid off their awareness like water over glass. Just another missing kid to add to the already insane laundry list that Derry boasted, and Richie knew the other Losers had simply counted themselves lucky for the reprieve and didn’t trouble themselves to probe further into the mystery. 

But the ambiguity hadn’t been enough of a comfort for Richie. He’d had a feeling about what it had meant, and it hadn’t taken long for his suspicions to be proven correct. 

For the first time, Richie had crept back down to the entrance of the sewers so as to purposefully seek out a disembodied Voice, actually hoping to hear one familiar to him. And he had, he’d heard his creepy fucking voice croon softly out of the sewer entrance and knew that meant he was dead, and that was supposed to be the end of it, he wasn’t supposed to have to think about him ever again. It was easy enough to decide never to return to the sewers again after that summer, after all. 

And he doesn’t want to sit here and talk about fucking Hockstetter now, him or Bowers. 

“It does make sense, actually,” Richie says abruptly, rising from his seat and digging around his pockets for his room key. He’s going to go have a fucking shower and get his head on straight so that he can finish out the rest of Maturin’s orders, - that is, unless some other childhood spectre came crawling into _his_ bathroom next. “Hockstetter died that summer. Wasn’t actually him you saw in the car.”

The noise in the room hushes at ths, and they all turn to face him. Eddie’s eyes are wide, watching Richie’s poorly concealed and steadily growing hysteria, growing careless with what he tells them. Richie couldn’t agree more; knows he has to get out of this fucking room, can’t stand to sit here and be present when enough time has passed and Bowers Voice rises out of the floor where he’d drawn his last breath, but he just can’t find the goddamn _key_ \- 

“He what?” Ben asks faintly.

“He died,” Richie repeats, finally locating his key with no small amount of satisfaction. He stands and shakes himself out, ready to head back to his room, but Stan stops him before he can.

“And you know this… how?” Stan presses, hand curled around Richie’s bicep. “We all just thought he went missing.”

Richie searches his mind for an excuse, noticing Eddie’s panicked eyes across from him, suspecting how and why Richie and figured this out without telling the rest of them. But Richie's got nothing this time, fresh out of excuses and lies for his friends about why he knows the things he does, and he shrugs helplessly. 

“In the cistern!” Eddie blurts out after a moment, eyes roving across the faces of their friends, who now turn to face him. “When we were kids. I, uh, saw him too. You know, all the bodies floating around. You guys must have missed him.”

Richie nods, pointing at Eddie gratefully, saving his ass once again. “Yeah. Just forgot to ever mention it, I guess.”

“Oh,” Ben says, face falling sympathetically into a look of soft understanding. “I’m sorry, Rich. I forgot you were alone down there for so long.”

“Not a problem, Haystack,” Richie manages, smiling weakly at him, guilt biting at his ankles. 

He turns to the quilt covering Eddie's bed, picking at some loose threads and head pounding despite the silence that has overtaken the room, strange and rare when the seven of them are someplace all together. 

“So what’s the plan now, then?” Eddie asks, steering them back on course to what’s at stake here. “We’ve all got our tokens, I assume.”

The others nod their agreement, and Mike is just about to speak when Richie stands once again.

“Well _I’m_ planning on taking a fucking shower,” he says, glancing back at the bathroom and then towards Eddie. “Eddie, you can use it first if you want.”

Eddie smiles gratefully, but Mike looks solemn once again, looking over at the group of them gathered together in the room. 

“Better be quick about it,” he says, and while Richie is mentally chanting _please don’t say it, please don’t cut the clock like this_ , he does just that. “It’s almost time.”

Stan looks like he’s dreading hearing the answer, but unable to stop himself from asking. “Time for…”

“Neibolt,” Mike says softly, turning to him with regretful eyes and placing a hand over to rest on his shoulder, “Time to finish this.”

“Motherfucker.” Richie swears, knowing that the time has come, and that in the next five minutes, at least, it can’t get much worse than this. 

Of course, that’s when Bowers’ voice echoes in eerily through the bathroom door, inaudible to anybody else but him. 

_Oh, look at that. Did you miss me, Tozier?_

“Mother _fucker_.” Richie says again, this time with feeling, swiping down another throw pillow hard to the floor in resignation. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just know that this work is never abandoned - any gap between postings is just classes kicking my ass! 💞
> 
> also people will say that richie’s love wasnt requited & then not even care that juice newton’s angel of the morning played atop eddie’s leper scene 😒


	11. 2000 / Neibolt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Something has happened in the paint tonight and it is worth keeping. It’s nothing like I thought it would be and closer to what I meant. None of it is real, darling. I say it to you. Maybe we will wake up singing. Maybe we will wake up to the silence of shoes at the foot of the bed not going anywhere._
> 
> Richard Siken, Dots Everywhere

Standing in front of Neibolt, lit by the dying light of the setting sun, it feels as if the last six years of their lives haven’t happened at all. 

For a moment, glancing to the side at his oldest friends, Richie thinks he sees a bright blue fanny pack, the smooth leather of Stan’s childhood watch, Bev’s choppy, hacked off hair. It’s gone in the next, but even that single second of timelessness heralds a much darker time ahead, the laws of their world already warping to fit Pennywise’s whims. 

29 Neibolt Street itself lies untouched, the same silent, still grave that they had fled from all those years ago, guided out by the sure grip of a hand, the certainty of Eddie’s unfailing internal compass. Weeds have grown around the sides of the house, crawling up and down each side like ivy, and through the staircase railings like some haunting imitation of a Christmas garland. 

Strangest of all is the small and enduring patch of sunflowers arranged like a graveyard across the yard, bloated and bright, taunting in how they bob and sway their heads as if to welcome them back. The roses, too, are telling in their way: abundant and bright where they grow across from the latticework of the porch, but decayed and crumbling where they sit directly in front. It’s as good a warning as any, even if they won’t heed it: Do not tread here. This is not a place of sanctuary. 

The windows, too, are boarded up, ugly patchworks of rotting chestnut planks that stretch across to the end of each square frame, but do not stop the windows themselves from appearing like eyes, set into wooden walls for the purpose of watching them - studying them. He remembers what Bev had said after the first time around, back at Bill’s house; that it felt like the house was always watching her, even when she wasn’t standing right there in front of it.

At first he’d thought she’d only meant that in a figurative sense; some lingering terror of that plot of land and its imposing structure haunting her dreams, but now, with all of his memories returned to him, he too recognizes the weight of that house and how it has lain heavy across his shoulders all these years. 

He dreads the return. 

The moment his foot crosses that threshold, he knows that it’ll hit him all at once, his chattering Voices silenced, Pennywise’s influence blanketing them all, crawling up the walls of the Well House like mould. He knows just as well what awaits him even deeper in, beneath the crumbling stairs and rotting floorboards of the house’s main floors. Down there lies a darker danger, a fate that he doesn’t yet know whether or not he will be able to slip away from.

Maturin wasn’t exactly clear on the chances of success, and if a god can’t even be sure, how the fuck is he supposed to know?

There is one certainty, if nothing else. He’ll be damned if anyone else meets their end here, that they all do not walk out of this fucking house of horrors. Hell or high water, he’ll always make sure that it’s him, if anyone at all, who takes that solemn walk towards the sacrificial altar. 

“We should p-probably s-say something, huh,” Bill eventually says, stutter even more pronounced than usual at the sight of the house. He’s only gotten more jittery the longer they’ve stood there, no doubt imagining Georgie’s final moments, the fact that his little bones lie down there buried by time and dirt to this day, even if he’d forgotten he’d even had a little brother in the intervening years since they'd last set foot here. 

Richie is starting to think it might be a good idea to try to ease the tension a little, crack a joke or two while he still has the chance, and the wherewithal, at that.

Might be the last one he ever gets to tell - _the last chance,_ says a slimy little voice in his head, _to make Eddie laugh again_ \- but Stan doesn’t give him the opportunity, voice sharp and tightly controlled even as he flinches at the looming turrets, the dark windows. 

“I don’t want to say something. I want to get this over with and go home with you all, and never have to come back to this town again.”

The statement settles on them like broken glass, cutting and sharp, but no less true for how hard it is to hear. They all want that. The vision of the seven of them walking out of Derry’s limits, triumphant and weightless, hands clasped and memories untouched, their destination one and the same wherever it is, is nothing short of intoxicating. 

The only question is if they’re really going to get it. 

“Stan’s right,” Eddie says, stepping forward to stand between Richie and the man in question. “Let’s just - do this guys. We’ll have years to say shit to each other. I just want this fucking done.”

Richie's heart tears a little. _What if we don’t?_ he wants to demand, kicking and screaming like a child. _What if I don’t have the time to say everything I need to you? Not them, not everyone else. Just me._

He’s always been a little like that, drawing out the moment, going just that littlest bit too far past keeping it short and sweet and leaving them wanting more, stalling and stalling in hopes of missing the moment that Eddie would have to slip his shoes on and go back home, leaving him cold and quiet once again without his favourite audience. 

It’s not that he’d particularly love to say all of it here, either, _of all fucking places_ , Neibolt’s creaking porch and shattered windows watching his every breath, cataloging it to throw back at him at a later time, sharper and more razor-edged than when he’d thrown it in.

But at least it would be said. 

He can’t, of course; has to keep all of those secrets, all of those feelings, tucked away inside himself lest they come spilling out to muck up the shoes of everyone around him, once again and always marring his friends’ pristine appearances with his own messy issues.

Mike speaks instead.

“Yeah, I - I don’t think we need some drawn-out speech either,” he says, head ducked a bit bashfully, but jaw set determined when he raises his head to look back at them. “But I did just want to say - I love you guys. So much. And I missed you. I can’t thank you enough for coming back when Richie and I called, and I’m - I’m so glad we’ll all have the rest of our lives to make up for it.”

That simple statement does more than anything else to lift their spirits just enough for them to feel steady on their feet once again. The clock is ticking, and each second only counts down to the moment that this cannot be put off any longer, that they’ll have to go inside to meet their fate. 

Only one thing seems missing, now. 

Everyone stops to look at Richie expectantly.

He supposes it does feel strange not to end the moment on at least one wisecrack from him. He’s been quiet just a little too long, and if that’s what his friends need to walk with heads held high into that house, how could he ever refuse them?

“Alright Losers,” Richie says, a faint smile gracing his lips. “No long speeches. Let’s kill this fucking clown.”

_\----_

The inside of the house is just as gloomy and menacing as expected, their hesitant footsteps the loudest sound in the building.

It’s almost worse that nothing jumps out at them as soon as they step inside, because with every breath, Richie’s chest starts to feel tightly constricted, the suspense building and building with no room to break. 

Dust falls from the ceiling as they enter, the dying light of the late evening spilling through cracked windows. The parallel curving staircases leading to the second floor look as though one wrong look would see them crumbling down into dust, so it’s just as well that they’re not here to explore this time. They only need to find their way back into the basement, lowering themselves one by one into the depths. 

He’s fucking glad. Richie isn’t sure he could stomach entering _those_ rooms again, anyway. The looming circus statues, the wooden marionette bearing his own face resting peacefully in that coffin, Eddie’s sickly grey complexion expelling black bile onto the torn mattress. 

He shakes himself out of those memories. They won’t help him now. 

Their steps echo down the long hallways that curve out from each side, no light visible in either direction. In the entranceway they pause, an unsure silence filling the air around them. 

“Do any of you r-remember which way it w-was to the b-basement?” Bill asks, and the answers are very much less than helpful. 

“Left.”

“Right”

“Directly ahead.”

They all stare at each other, dismay written all over their faces as they realize this won’t be as straightforward as they had hoped. If they all remember a different route to the same place they had all gone, it’s not them that are at fault. Pennywise already has his claws sunk into their minds.

“Fuck,” Stan sighs. A loose thread hanging from the sleeve of his cardigan has his restless fingers unravelling the wool centimetre by centimetre, and Richie lays a hand on his own to still the movements. He’ll only be more upset if his sweater is ruined before it absolutely has to be. 

Mike sighs, a deep breath let out his nose. “Well then we’ll just have to guess. But we have to keep moving. We can’t just stay here just asking to be a target.”

And so they do, throwing a mental dart and choosing a direction. They stay close to one another, the fear that they will be split up forefront in all of their minds, and the first room that they come upon looks like the old living room, familiar enough. The house’s sickly silence endures.

“Oh, cute,” Richie says, poking a finger onto the nearby mantel, finger tracing over the looping _Home Sweet Home_ script that runs across the weathered wood. “Kitschy. I kinda like it. Who knew the clown was so into interior decorating?”

“Beep beep, Richie.” Bev responds darkly, hand twitchy where it hangs by her side, the other still gripping the cold iron rod she had pilfered from the front yard.

Richie grumbles but concedes, moving slowly alongside the rest of them further along the hallway, but Eddie remains rooted to the spot where the mirror hangs, eyes almost glazing over, they’re held so still. 

He waits a moment, but Eddie says nothing.

“E-Eddie?” Bill asks quietly, eyes glancing around warily, as if something is already preparing to jump out at them from the shadows. “Wh-what is it?”

Eddie doesn’t answer, but his gaze stays locked onto that short and simple statement. He’s mouthing something to himself, and as they watch, the words begin to curl into themselves, shifting, splitting, and rearranging themselves into a brand new sentence.

_WHERE ARE YOU GOING, EDS? IF YOU LIVED HERE, YOU’D BE HOME BY NOW._

And in the dirty glass of the mirror above, the Eddie standing in the reflection lifts his head with a grin, black bile spilling out of the side of his mouth and falling down to cover his chin. Just like when they were kids, Eddie’s head sticking out of the dirty mattress on the floor. The rest of them don’t even appear.

A knife could cut through the silence that falls at this new terror, and for a moment Richie thinks that one does, because a shattering sound splinters the quiet, and by the time he’s removed his head from the shelter of his arms, it’s to see the absence of space where Eddie had just been standing, an ancient-looking brick having to shatter the glass thrown by Ben’s sure arm, Eddie sheltered under the other.

“It’s not real,” he’s already saying, mouth a thin line and hand splayed fully against Eddie’s back, though staring grimly at the frame of broken glass. “Forget it. It’s not real.”

But Eddie is still shaking his head. “It’s-”

“ _Not real._ ” Ben finishes firmly. “It’s _not_ , Eddie. Say you know that.”

“I don’t-” Eddie looks around desperately, at all of them stood loosely in the same kind of circle that they had formed when making a blood pact so many years ago. Nobody seems to know what to say. “Guys, I. I don’t think I’m going to make it out of here, I don’t - I don’t know why, but I think - no, I _know_ that I, I’m going to die here.”

“Eddie,” Bev whispers, horrified, but it’s Richie whose blood boils at this, stepping in front to grab the sides of Eddie’s face, direct his gaze upwards so that their eyes meet. He’s heard enough of Eddie’s possible death from every other supernatural creature that haunts this godforsaken town. He’ll be damned if Eddie throws in with them, too.

“No, you’re fucking not,” he says, eyes blazing. “I told you that back at the Townhouse. It’s not your ‘ _time’,_ you’re not sick, or frail, or too delicate to survive this. You don’t have to go anywhere without me or any of us if you don’t want to. All of that was the truth, Eds, okay? I promise you.”

“But how do you _know_?” Eddie whispers, as if the others aren’t there and can’t hear everything they have to say to each other anyway. “I - I can just _feel_ it, Richie. Something wants me to know. I’m not going to leave here.”

“No. I _know_ it, Eds,” Richie says, dropping his forehead down to rest it against Eddie’s own. “I do. I promise. I will not fucking let you die here.”

If it take my life to do it, he doesn’t add.

There’s more to say, but nothing that can withstand the open air and all these ears around them. That Eddie won’t die, and that if he does, it's not just this world and these people that will feel the loss and the force of his grief.

If Eddie doesn’t walk out of here, Richie will walk into heaven itself, will knock at the door of God, or Maturin, or anybody else who may be up there and he won’t leave without taking Eddie back with him, or razing it all to ash on his way back down. He’s never been one for destruction, but for this he has the capacity to become an avenging angel. That he’ll conduct ritual after ritual until Eddie is back in this world, would give up anything, do whatever he needs to, to have him back, warm, and alive, and fucking tangible in his arms and his sight.

He doesn’t have to be his. He just has to be alive. He doesn’t know what ‘somebody’ it is that whispers so cruelly into Eddie’s mind, but as far as he’s concerned, they have no say in the matter.

“Come on,” he instead says firmly, tugging Eddie along by the hand and moving back to stand with the others. 

The next door they try is hardly better, the rotting corpse of Betty Ripsom - or, more accurately, what’s left of her - running at them with a giggle, little Eddie Corcoran hot on her heels. It takes the full force of both Ben and Mike to slam the door closed again long enough to slide the chain lock back into place. 

They’re all breathing a little heavier after this, all systems on high alert. 

“Just once,” Richie says heavily. “I wish one of these doors would lead to some fucking Scooby Doo shit, you know? A conveyor belt floor. Old Man Jenkins in a mask. Empty suit of armour up to some classic, harmless shenanigans.”

“Do you think its possible for you to pay attention, and not talk about Scooby fucking Doo?” Bev whispers, checking over Mike’s shoulders while Bill does Ben’s, but Stan almost laughs for the first time since they’ve stepped foot in town, and frankly that’s worth risking the others’ collective wrath. 

Richie salutes solemnly at Beverly, but waits until she turns around to grin over at Stan, making stupid xylophone tip-toeing noises with his mouth just to see Stan’s reluctant little smile, imitating Scooby Doo’s sneaky scuttling walk as they begin to move again. 

His humour quickly drains when the air seems to get colder and colder the further in they go, the rooms growing darker and smaller. Richie brings his hands up to his mouth to start blowing on them in the hopes that his fingers will regain feeling.

With Bill leading the charge, Eddie’s only started to press closer and closer to Richie for the heat he emanates, looking enviously at the thick leather jacket he wears, and Stan’s paused for a moment, distracted trying to pull down the sleeves of his knit cardigan to cover his hands. That makes him closest to the other three, when Mike stops in his tracks and shouts -

“Where’s Ben?”

Richie whirls around, catching Eddie as he does the same, and they all seem to realize at the same time that Mike’s despairing face isn’t mistaken. Ben is no longer with them, but that doesn’t mean he’s far - after only a second, there comes the sound of nails on glass and Ben’s pained moan.

They burst into motion all at once, Bev and Mike disappearing behind the nearest doorframe, and Stan crashing after them, Richie, Bill, and Eddie trailing them into the next room. They only just see a glimpse of Ben in the adjoining chamber before the floor beneath their feet starts to tilt and whirl like a funhouse, the latter three of the group caught in its throes, clutching at each other like lifelines as the world starts to spin, Pennywise’s gleeful laughter echoing all around them. 

He’s trying hard not to vomit - Eddie would never forgive him - but the entire world has turned into flashing lights and bright colours melting into one another, and he’s not sure how long his control will hold.

By the time it’s stopped, they can barely open their eyes without puking, heads spinning even after the motion has ceased. Richie grips an arm each of Bill and Eddie’s on either side of him, trying his best to steady all three, but even then it takes a few moments before he feels like he can open his eyes without them crossing in front of him.

Too soon, a door slams somewhere behind them, and Richie and Eddie, along with Bill, whirl around to see one quick glimpse of the rest of their friends' faces before they’ve disappeared behind the heavy oak door separating the two rooms.

Divided at last, their worst fears come to fruition.

“M-Mike!” Bill shouts, jumping forward to slam a fist against the door, jiggle the doorknob which doesn’t yield. “Bev! Stan! Ben!” 

They can hear muffled shouts coming from the other side, what sounds like Ben first and then a higher-pitched Bev. Heavy footsteps, the sound of more smashing glass, and then an eerie and oppressive silence from the other side. 

“Zoinks,” Eddie says flatly. 

“F-Fuck,” Bill says, and only then does Richie jump forward to try to help, slam against the door with his own heavier-set shoulders. They throw themselves against the door again and again, but nothing, not even a small splintering crack, appears on the surface.

They’re just about to try again for what has to be the thirtieth time when Eddie’s frantic voice sounds from behind them.

“Guys!” he shouts, stumbling away from the wall and batting at something around his feet. “There’s something-”

And then a yelp as his body goes crashing down to the floor, thousands of crawling green vines slithering out from beneath the walls to entrap him in their snare, curling around to tie tighter and tighter, twisting themselves into knots along his body. 

Bill is still contending with the door, but Richie can’t help it; has to leave it to go over and help Eddie. 

“Eds!” he screams, running over to his prone body to tug helplessly at the knots, but the vines feel like tree trunks; they're so thick around his body. Tightening and regrowing, just the same as the leather buckles had done down in Keene’s basement. Regrowing faster than he can possibly break them. “Fuck, _shit_. Fuck.” 

“Richie - Richie, I can’t - fucking cut them or something, _please_ , I don’t wanna die here-”

“You’re not Eds, you’re not going to die,” Richie tries to soothe, even as his own mind takes off at a thousand miles per hour, fear icing his veins. “I don’t have a knife, but I’ll - I’ll get it, I promise, just calm down-”

All of a sudden, a high-pitched whistling noise cuts through their panic; a sound too distinctive to be mistaken for anything else but what it is, but - but surely that’s impossible. 

There’s no way that a train could be anywhere near the room - the old tracks on Neibolt have been discontinued for years now, rusted over and as quiet as a grave ever since the Southern Seacoast company had gone broke, no more old rusted boxcars rattling past on their way to Camden-Rockland-Bar Harbor-Wiscasset-Bath-Portland-Ogunquit-Berwicks. 

Eddie has used to do that, Richie remembers now, somewhere in the back of his head even as everything continues to come crashing down around them. To stave off those asthma attacks that were really just panic; he’d close his eyes and start to recite the locations along track 4 with the same studied desperation of Bill’s _he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts_ , almost like he didn’t even know he was doing it. 

Richie hadn’t ever said anything about it, keeping quiet the way he always could do when it really mattered. But he had committed all those names to memory too, sure as shit. What if Eddie was too in his head the next time, he’d thought then, spiralling too fast to remember all those names in time to calm himself down right? He could never figure out why it was that this, of all things, had helped him, but all that had mattered was that it did.

 _Why don’t we have some fun while you’re here?_ comes Pennywise’s taunting voice, audible even over the sounds of Bill’s thrusting fists, Eddie’s shrieks, the train whistle coming closer and closer. Coming from - fucking eveywhere, really, around and beneath and above and below. _What,_ _don’t you like this game, Eds? I was here every time, you know, every time you’d come skulking down to watch those old traincars go by. Riding to freedom, exactly where you know you’d never get to go._

“Sh-sh-sh-” Eddie stutters out, writhing in the vines and sounding far too much like Bill at his most anxious.

Richie wants to spiral too, wants to ask so many questions - had Eddie really done that, why, when, didn’t he know Richie would have been available any time, at any day, no matter when he needed company? He would have watched the trains go by with him.

But all of that will have to wait until (if) they get out of here because there are more important issues to contend with and it's all happening very fast. 

_What’s the matter, Eddie? I thought you loved those old Westerns. And you, Richie’s damsel. Don’t you believe he can save you now?_

Eddie is struck speechless and scared as the vines tighten enough to turn his skin white, horrified eyes meeting Richie’s, even as the skin of his cheeks blush pink and telling. Richie is frozen too, but only for a second before he’s back in motion, fingers scrabbling at woody vines, ropes that are flowering now into the white blooms that used to creep under Richie’s backyard fence.

It goes on like that, writhing vines, white Morning Glory tauntingly blooming and receding over and over atop them, Eddie’s scared gasps undercutting any calm that might possibly be allowed to take hold.

It’s only too soon that Pennywise’s taunting voice returns.

_What’s the matter, Richie? Can’t figure it out? Can’t save him, after all?_

“Shut up, shut _up_ ,” Richie mutters between his teeth, jaw clenched tight as his fingertips break and start to bleed from the force with which he is tearing at the vines. Panicked desperation is making his fingers clumsy, and he hates that Pennywise can see into his head now, can see how scared he is that his own shortcomings will be the cause of Eddie’s death before he even has the chance to do as the turtle said and change it all for good. 

The train’s whistling grows sharper and louder as the seconds pass like molasses, shrill and painful in their ears. It gets so close that Bill is screaming at them to move, to take cover before whatever it is arrives to hit them and Richie is letting out a sob as he gives up on the futile goal of untangling those hundreds of vines from Eddie’s skin, instead encompassing him in his arms to shelter his body and tuck him close to where it’s safe, praying that Bill has found a way out before it's too late for all of them. 

_Uh-oh! Better think faster than that, Richie,_ the voice jeers jubilantly. _Sounds like the evening train is on its way. Do you hear it? Do you hear it? Do y-_

With a snap, it all suddenly disappears, Pennywise’s voice with it. All at once the deafening whistling sound, the feeling that their death will be imminent, they’re all still covering their heads - 

Stops.

But something else starts up, too. 

“No, no, not a-fucking- _gain_ ,” Eddie moans, still entrapped, and its all Richie can do whirl around and just to stand in front of him as a shield for whatever is to come.

Because it’s the fridge at the other end of the room, the same fucking fridge from the last time they were here that is shaking now, and Pennywise had uncurled himself from the shelves, jerking forward exaggeratedly to descend on Eddie’s shaking and bleeding young form. 

Except this time it isn’t the clown that comes bursting out of the mouldy shelves through the retro little door. This time, the door creaks quietly open, swinging slowly to reveal a face just there where the freezer should be. 

Just a face. No body. 

“Billy?” Georgie whispers, eyes roving across the room to rest on each of them in turn, but it’s not really Georgie, can’t be. The worst part is that he - he doesn’t have a body, no, but aside from that he doesn’t look scary at all. He doesn’t look like a monster, or a ghost, or a phantasm trick. 

He doesn’t even look _dead._ He just looks like Bill’s little five year old brother - all of their little brother, really, where it counted. Even if only just a head.

“G-G-Georgie?” Bill chokes, stumbling forward from the door and arm hanging loose and heavy down by his side, flashlight already starting to fall from his grip. He doesn’t even seem to notice that the face on the shelf is slowly starting to shift, to turn grey and mottled, little shapes starting to poke their way out of the sides of his cheeks. “G-Georgie, is that-”

“Bill, _stop,_ ” Eddie calls over to him, gagging as he glances at where microscopic holes are starting to tear their way out of Georgie’s face. “It’s not - it’s not him.”

The face doesn’t seem to like that much. An angry little furrow appears over his eyebrows as it rolls its eyes to meet Eddie’s, and Georgie’s head rolls it’s way out of the fridge. Grows - fucking _spider_ legs. Starts to move towards them. 

“Shit,” Richie says faintly. His eyes dart around the room desperately, but nothing has changed. They’re all still trapped, the others beyond their reaches somewhere on the other side of these four walls. There’s not even a window they could break through in a worst case scenario. 

And Eddie - he’s still trapped in the ropes of the vines. Even if there were some way out of this room, they could hardly just leave him there. 

Bill is still staring open-mouthed at the vision of his little brother, but Richie - Richie is still curled protectively in front of Eddie’s prone form. Which is very quickly going to turn from ideal to disastrous, considering that Georgie’s pitch-black pupils are fixed directly onto him, spider limbs poised to jump. 

Fuck. He knows what he has to do. 

Eddie is gasping behind him, limbs struggling in the circulation-cutting grip of the ropes, and Bill isn’t going to be any help either, it looks like. Richie counts the beats of his heart, drowning out the sounds around him and starts to chant quietly, watching Georgie’s movements with an eagle eye. 

_Three,_ Richie counts down in his head. _Two. One-_

As expected, at that very second, the spider-head leaps across the floor, pincers extended towards Richie’s chest. Dimly, he’s aware of his friends shouting behind him, but he knows that he has to ignore them to get this done - allowing the claws to sink just far enough into his chest that their connection won’t be broken when Richie throws himself to the opposite end of the room, away from Eddie’s helpless form and Bill’s frozen self. 

He hadn’t planned for what to do once he moved the danger away from them - Georgie’s claws are still digging into his chest enough for rivulets of blood to flow down and soak through his shirt, and he can’t both keep his balance _and_ try to tear the creature off of him, and so he goes crashing down hard onto the floor, a sharp pain shooting through his back. 

Richie gasps, forearms straining as he tries his best to keep Georgie at bay, teeth snapping so close to his face that he can feel the disturbance in the air around them. 

“Bill!” Eddie screams, kicking his legs and thrashing to try to get out of the weeds that hold him fast to the cabinet. “Bill, _help him_! Go!”

But Bill is frozen in place, watching helplessly as Georgie’s grey and black mottled face gnashes its teeth at Richie, stabbing its claws in and out at his face where he’s straining to hold it just shy of making contact with his skin. 

“ _Bill!_ ” Eddie screams again, thrashing more desperately. “What the fuck are you doing? Help him!”

A sharp pain slices down Richie’s face, leaving a trail of welled up blood in its wake. Everything around him is a colourless blur without his glasses, as monochromatic and lifeless as everything else in this house is, and he can’t even see to figure out where he should be rolling, if anywhere. Eddie’s screams are all he can hear over the high-pitched laughter of the Georgie-spider; that, and Bill’s laboured breaths.

It’s not exactly his fault, Richie thinks somewhere distantly, but it’s a hell of a time to have a panic attack, all things considered. 

Eddie’s leg finally breaks free of one of the vines twisting up to hold him in place, and he rolls over the limited amount he can the same way you would if you had just gotten bucked off the back of a horse and had to quickly move to avoid its stamping hooves.

Richie thinks stupidly, hysterically, of the old Westerns Eddie and Bill had used to be so obsessed with, chasing each other around the Barrens with the pop-guns Sonia would never have let her precious baby use had she known of them, and putting on stupid rasping twangs as they shouted at each other. Maybe he has those old games to thank for those quick reflexes now. 

Bill, who is still stock-still frozen, and again - _totally not his fault_ , trauma and fear, etcetera! _-_ but Richie wants to scream, like, _Come the fuck on, cowboy! I’m holding on by a thread here and could really use some of that fire you had lit in you chasing little Eddie up a tree in your dad’s old boots!_

The door bangs open, nearly hitting Eddie where he’s still curled on the ground trying to avoid the strangling weeds, and the others burst through the doorway, Ben’s arm held protectively over Bev and Stan’s shoulders and something red marring the front of his shirt. He hadn’t even noticed it open.

At the sight of Richie struggling underneath Georgie’s spider legs, Mike swears and leaps forward to rip the creature off of him, into the only corner where none of them are currently situated. 

Foreseeing what’s about to happen just before it does, Richie doesn’t give himself a moment to get his bearings before he’s leaping over to Bill and tugging his face down so that it’s hidden in his chest, arm curled protectively around his head so that he will neither see nor hear the moment when the old beam that Mike holds comes swinging down to stab through the monster bearing his little brother’s face. 

It was a good call. The shriek that the head lets out is terrible and piercing, but it has the effect of making the weeds that have stalked Eddie through the room retreat, curling back under the walls and through the cracks in the floor. Bev leans Ben against Stan more securely so that she can bend down to help Eddie up, checking him over for wounds. 

“Richie, - _fuck,_ I’m so s-s-sorry,” Bill finally stutters, pulling out of Richie’s arms, but then reaching forward to grab for him again, pulling back at last moment, hesitating.

Richie ignores this, pulling Bill in once again to crush him against his chest and hold him tight. “Bill, it’s fine. Alright? You were just scared.”

Bill shakes his head. “I sh-should have-”

“Everyone's allowed to get scared and freeze up,” Richie cuts him off, swaying them a little bit as he speaks. “Even you, Big Bill. Christ.”

Bill accepts this, head hung in shame but not leaving the arms that hold him tight. After a moment he pulls back completely from the embrace, glancing over to where Eddie is propped against the wall almost nervously, as if awaiting some terrible judgement from that end, too. 

But Eddie only smiles back at him - tightly, he’s got Bev pulling gauze between her teeth as she tapes him up where his leg bleeds - but smiles nonetheless. “He’s right, Bill. You’re okay. And he’s fine, too. We’re all good, yeah?”

“Y-yeah,” Bill grimaces, but he still looks unsure. Richie figures it’s as good as they’re going to get on that end

The seven of them take the moment to look each other over, three across from four. Mike and Bev are a little more roughed up than they had been before the group’s separation, but it’s Ben and Stan who have clearly taken the brunt of whatever went down in the next room - the latter still white-faced and shaking, and Ben’s shirt soaked nearly completely through with red.

Nobody asks for details - not yet, and not with that pleading look in Ben’s eyes. 

“So, what?” Eddie eventually asks, hobbling back to Richie’s side once the bandages have been applied, leaning heavily against the arm offered to him. “Does the revolving fucking floor mean that we’re even more lost now?”

But his question doesn’t need to be answered, or if it is, it isn’t by any of them - the final word has hardly left his mouth when a door appears at the other end of the dimly lit hallway. 

The crack beneath glows orange, shadows on the walls beckoning to them, a crooked finger curling forward to welcome them home.

  
  



End file.
